Legal News

On Chuck Knoblauch, Assault and Common-Law Marriage

By Ashby Jones

Earlier today, we came across a story on ESPN about former major leaguer Chuck Knoblauch. According to the story, Knoblauch was charged on Tuesday with beating his “common-law wife” down in Houston. Click here, as well, for the Houston Chronicle article, which includes a video.

We were intrigued by this story for a couple of reasons. For starters, it’s Chuck Knoblauch, one of the more perplexing baseball players of our lifetime. Early in his career, with the Minnesota Twins, Knoblauch looked like a possible Hall of Famer. After he was traded to the Yankees before the 1998 season, he stopped being as good, though partly because the Yankees were so dominant in the late 1990s, Knoblauch seemed always to be in the spotlight. He infamously chose to argue with an umpire rather than fetch a ball during one 1998 playoff game, and later completely lost the ability to make the short throw from his position at second base to first.

But the story interested us for another reason: the use of the phrase “common-law wife.”

Really?” we thought. Common-law wife? Is that really a thing? Perhaps we’ve been living under a rock, but we had no idea that such a concept still existed.

But lo and behold, it does. Common-law marriages, it seems, are attainable in 11 states, including Texas, where Knoblauch and his wife had been living, commonly.

We called around to family-law practitioners down in the Lone Star state, but didn’t get anyone who could talk to us about what constitutes a common-law marriage. Fortunately, a Dallas lawyer named Jerry Melton put up the basics on his Web site.

Writes Melton:

A finding of the existence of a common law or informal marriage is only justified if the evidence shows that the parties agreed to be married, that they lived together in Texas as husband and wife, and they have publicly represented themselves as married. All three of these requisites must exist at the same time. In addition, the common law marriage without formality statute precludes proof of the existence of an informal marriage if the acts occurred in a state other than Texas.

The Common Law Marriage Fact Sheet on the Alternatives to Marriage site further explains:

[In Texas], A man and woman who want to establish a common-law marriage must sign a form provided by the county clerk. In addition, they must (1) agree to be married, (2) cohabit, and (3) represent to others that they are married.

Fair enough, but why does this convention exist? The best explanation we can find is a historical one. Once up on a time, statutory marriages were rare; most marriages were “common.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 1877 case called Meister v. Moore, ruled that a statute regulating marriage doesn’t, by its existence, nullify the right to common-law wed. In other words, in order to rid a state of common-law marriage a state needs to enact a law that affirmatively bans them. Otherwise, the presumption is for validity.

Now that we’ve got that mostly cleared up, let’s get back to Knoblauch. On Tuesday, a judge set his bond at $10,000 after he appeared in court Tuesday. According to a criminal complaint, Knoblauch’s wife told police he hit her in the face and choked her at their Houston home Friday.

Prosecutors contend Knoblauch had been drinking heavily Friday evening and taking Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Knoblauch’s attorney, Dan Cogdell, told the Chronicle the incident was a dispute between two divorcing people and that charges should not have been filed.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 29, 2009 (boomark / email).