pjc-family-2024-lib

PJC 201.4

D ISSOLUTION OF M ARRIAGE

QUESTION 2 Were PARTY A and PARTY B married by January 3, 1995 ? Answer “Yes” or “No.” Answer: _______________

COMMENT Source. The foregoing submission is based on Tex. Fam. Code §2.401(a)(2). In PJC 201.4A, the phrases “two people” and “as spouses” are used in place of the phrases “a man and a woman” and “as husband and wife” that appear in Tex. Fam. Code § 2.401(a)(2); the substitution is based on the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges , 576 U.S. 644 (2015). The Committee expresses no opinion on the retroactive effect of the Obergefell decision on informal marriages in same-sex relationships. See generally Ranolls v. Dewling , 223 F. Supp. 3d 613, 619–22, 624 (E.D. Tex. 2016) (examining the retroactivity of Obergefell and finding Texas’s prohibition against same-sex informal marriages unconstitutional). No instruction regarding declaration of informal marriage. No instruction based on Tex. Fam. Code §2.401(a)(1), regarding proof of an informal marriage by evidence that a declaration of marriage has been executed as provided by Tex. Fam. Code §2.402, has been provided, since the existence of such proof would virtually never be a jury question. When to use. The two questions in PJC 201.4B should be used if it is appropriate under the evidence to ask the jury whether the parties are presently married and, if so, on what date they were married. In some cases, however, the state of the evidence may make it unlikely that the jury will be able to agree on a particular date on which the marriage occurred; the relevant inquiry may be whether the marriage existed on a par ticular known date or on the occurrence of a particular event, such as the purchase of a house. In such a case, the questions in PJC 201.4C should be used. Rewording question. In appropriate cases, the second question in PJC 201.4C may be reworded to reflect a particular event instead of a particular date: for example, “Were PARTY A and PARTY B married when they acquired the property at 10 Acorn Lane in Houston, Texas ?” In some cases, the second question should be expanded into a series of questions inquiring about the existence of the marriage on various specific dates, events, or both; the dates and events should be listed in chronological order, beginning with the earliest, and each question should be conditioned on a “No” answer to the previous one. Separate trials. The Committee suggests that if a suit involves not only whether and when the parties were married but also the ownership and characterization of sig-

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