I am currently considering drafting a bill, or at least a proposal anyway, to increase the legal age to marry to 21 years of age in Oklahoma.

Thoughts...?

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What the heck for?

Why the heck not? Give me a sensible reason to prevent it, other than paying for college.

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I hope you're joking, but if not.....I don't know that we (as a State) have recovered from the watermelon-as-our-state-vegetable fiasco so maybe we should put this on the backburner for now.....there's only so much ridicule one can take during it's centennial.

Because this is a free country?

I should be able to get drunk if I can get married. Marriage is a bit more of a responsibility than drinking alcohol.

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Okay...It's not your place to tell others when they can marry.

Yeah, and I was a Marine standing in sand before I was 19 and couldn't drink a beer either.

How about a lower drinking age for soldiers?

If can you get your limbs blown and and blown other people's limbs off, then you should be able to get a drink.

How about lowering it for everybody?

I agree. I don't know, I guess in a liberal mind it's just another form of censorship or the man 'keeping you down.' I agree with the soldier thing too, if you can do that, you should be able to drink. I say, if anything, make it a lot harder to get married. Institute the counseling, the lab work, whatever.

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Why make it harder? It's a personal choice that shouldn't be legislated.

Drinking at a young age KILLS PEOPLE. That's why it's illegal.

Why do you always sound so rude?

Anyway.

I think it's something that should be thought of as a bigger deal than just a 'personal choice.'

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Because you're reading my posts with a French accent?

Did you get married/divorced young?

Yes, I did. But I don't feel that the experience was a negative one. I mean, it's negative for the state's annual divorce rate. .... But I do not regret getting married. It just opened my eyes to how often it does occur. Overall, I just wish there was a more thorough way to get youngn's to take the insitution of marriage more seriously. I find myself, stillnow, trying to decide what to think of it.

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It is a bit sad to watch, but here's how I view it...A 99% failure rate of marriages that occur before age 21 hurts the general population how? It really doesn't as far as I can tell, so why infringe upon the rights of EVERYBODY to choose to be married just to support somebody's idea that a state's divorce rates somehow reflect upon it's people?

Off topic. Woe. Its w-o-e isn't it?

Your profile is hilarious.

As you can tell, I've lost my drive for arguing. I think it's because it's almost 5pm!

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If your proposal is based on old enough to wed is old enough to drink I am saddened you insist on drunk instead of a social drink.
Age of marraige is not the issue. I support the idea that EVERYONE get pre-marital counselling. If you have never wed you need to understand conflict resolution, financial management, family planning, etc. If you have been DIVORCED, you really need this training.

I thought the "starter" marriage didn't count. It's kind of like sampling a flavor at Baskin Robbin's before deciding what you want to order.

I don't understand why you would raise the legal age to be married? What purpose would it serve? Do you think it would actually lower the divorce rate? If so, do you think that you should try some other things first, like requiring people under 25 to attend x amount of marriage counseling before marriage. Or maybe not requiring but potentially incentivising it somehow.

People would just resort to common law marriage, which for some God awful reason, Oklahoma hasn't abolished.

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Why don't you like common law Mid? I actually really like that option and am glad it exsists.

Actually, I love it. I plan to do a lot of work in family law when I get out of law school. I expect to make thousands of dollars off of proving whether or not various persons' common law marriages existed. From what I've seen, the common law marriage option is more often than not used either by one party to attempt to take unfair advantage over the other party who did not marry them for a reason, or by one party (who happens to be in a superior financial position) to avoid divorce court altogether by simply denying the marriage ever existed (and the burden of proof is on the person trying to prove the marriage existed). It's a real sticky wicket from a legal/factual standpoint.

I do think the state actually abolished it quite some time ago when the statute was enacted which requires a license for a marriage. Unfortunately, no case law exists on that, so the issue has yet to go to the Supreme Court (which is really a surprise).

All that said, I've never seen anyone ever prevail on a common law marriage claim (trying to prove there was a marriage), the burden almost requires a perfect set of facts to prove. So in the end, it's usually just a way for lawyers to make a lot of money at the expense of their clients and for our already crowded family dockets to become even more unnecessarily congested.

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I'm not familiar with the law here, but in Texas I loved the way it was set up. Not everyone wants to go through with the official "I do" ceremony. As a common law couple you can still take advantage of the perks the church-married people get ("joint" this and that) but when it's over....assuming it's an amicable split....it's just done. No lawyers needed (sorry mid!). You just move out and move on. Nice and easy. I think technically you are supposed to get a "divorce" but I don't know anyone that has done that.

You don't need a marriage for "joint this and that." You never have. There are certain sorts of protections which only legally married people have, such as the right to inherit a certain portion of an estate, the ability to own property in a tenancy in the entirety (doesn't exist in Oklahoma), certain rights on health insurance plans, rights under ERISA, etc.

I'm not sure if the Texas "common law marriage" has all of that, but by the sound of it, the answer would be no. I know nothing about Texas law though.

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