09/06/2026
You can live with somebody in Louisiana for forty years, raise children, buy a house together, and be exactly as married as two strangers at a bus stop. 💍
Louisiana does not recognize common law marriage. Not now, and not at any point in its history as a state. This surprises people constantly, because it feels like the kind of place that would.
The reason is the same reason for half the odd things in Louisiana law. We are a civil law state. Our system descends from Rome through France and Spain, not from English common law, and in that tradition marriage is a civil contract with formalities. There is a license. There is a ceremony. There is an officiant and there are witnesses and there is a signed certificate that gets recorded. Absent that, in the eyes of Louisiana law, there is no marriage, no matter how the neighbors describe you.
And it matters enormously, because so much else here hangs off marriage. Community property. The surviving spouse's usufruct. Intestate succession. 🏡
So here is the scenario that plays out in Louisiana courthouses every year. A couple lives together for decades. The house is in his name because that is how it was done in 1974. He dies without a will. She is not his spouse under the law, which means she does not inherit as one, and the property goes to his children, or his siblings, or a nephew in Texas that nobody has seen since a funeral in 1998. And she is told to work something out with them.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing. Louisiana will generally recognize a common law marriage that was validly formed in a state that allows it. So a couple who established one in Texas and then moved here can be in a very different position than the couple next door who never left.
The license costs almost nothing. The lack of one can cost somebody the roof over her head.
Say the vows. Sign the paper. Louisiana is not going to take your word for it.
