Concubinage. An Old Type of Unofficial Marriage

Abstract

The common law marriage was today what we call pure common law marriage, as seen, and there is the impure common law marriage (incestuous or adulterine), that has been always condemned. Since then, the depreciative sense of the word concubinage extinguished, gradually, among us, as a reconquest, by our people, of the old common law marriage. This form of marriage lasts in several other countries as the "married on common law", in fourteen American States; in Scotland, with the same name; and in the Mexican State of Tamaulipas - marriage by behavior ("casamiento por comportamiento"). The Federal Brazilian Constitution, from 05.10.88, recognized the pure concubinage, as a form of family constitution, under the name of steady union. Under the atmosphere of the new Constitution, the steady union was regulated, by the Law n. 8.971, from 29.12.94, taking care of the companions' rights concerning alimony and succession; presently projects are going through the proper channels, in the Deputy Chamber and the Federal Senate (two Legislative Houses that constitute the National Congress), for the regulation of the Statute of the Concubines. On the stable union, the liberty of the companions is greater, because they live as if they were husband and wife, but, in reality, they are not. There is no conjugal estate, but simply, a family life or a concubinage. On the other hand, it is important to stand out that, under the psychologic aspect, presently, the married people, who got married only in a religious way, with no wedding register, although they feel as being married, they live under the stable union regimen. It is necessary that there is the possibility of considering the stable union like a new kind of common law marriage, that is what l propose. This, for me, already with this spirit "de iure constituendo", the common law marriage or the stable union is the family life neither adulterine nor incestuous, durable, public and continuous of a man and a woman, without matrimonial entailment, and living as being married, under the same roof or not and, consequently, constituting their real family.