Uh, I don’t think so. Marriage confers a whole new set of laws on things. A husband can’t just look at his wife and tell her to get out because he’s decided he’s moving his mistress in.
I don’t know the specifics of Community Property laws in Washington, DC; however, such things do exist and wives are generally thought to have a few more rights in such matters than tenants.
For those interested, here is a link to the Divorce Act (1985, c. 3 (2nd Supp.)) enacted by the federal Parliament.
Interesting. The division of responsibility between federal and provincial seems odd to me, but I’m not a lawyer (and to be honest, I don’t really understand Northern Piper’s post!). Good thing I have no plans to get divorced, because I clearly don’t know what I’d be getting into 
Maybe you should check out the Palimony website.
Yes, it does. But as the OP made clear, there is no marriage involved here.
No, but there is potentially a common law marriage which is recognized by Washington, DC which is where the OP is located. It appears that unless the couple expressly states that they do NOT intend to appear married, they ARE married, regardless of an actual ceremony.
this is the exact opposite of how common-law marriages work, i.e. requiring affirmative statements/expressions of intent that they are married
Do you have any cite for this whatsoever? Because depending on when the property is acquired, title definitely decides questions of possession of a residence, even a matrimonial one.
cite that courts like to imply constructive interests in a parcel of real estate as a matter of equity?
this is GQ people, not “what i think the law ought to be” 101!
Based on the cite I provided above, I don’t believe that’s true in all states; however, if you have information to the contrary, please post it. I would be interested to read it. I’m in Canada, where most of the cites in this thread are coming from, and here you DO expressly have to declare that you’re NOT living as a married couple, otherwise you are, from a property standpoint.
If you want your partner to have government benefits on behalf of you, you do have to declare that they are your common law partner; however, private benefits (extended health care, pension etc) require no such declaration - you just add the person as your dependent on the appropriate forms.
Well, Northern Piper is in Canada and has been providing cites relevant to the law here - I assume that it is information relevant to here that he is posting.
FWIW, Canadian and US common law rules are VERY different - I remember being quite surprised when I found out how…loosey-goosey US rules are on this subject.
It’s in plain text in your cite…
it’s a threshold question. if there’s no affirmative “holding out” there’s nothing to ever refute. living with someone and having the same address isn’t enough to prove intent to be married/qualify as a holding out.
the part about “If you live in one of the common law states and don’t want your relationship to become a common law marriage, you must be clear that it is your intention not to marry” is what comes after the fact when you engage in activities that are construed as holding yourselves out as married (the cite is a poorly written, non-primary source document, fwiw)
you can’t be held out as married unilaterally by the other spouse - generally the only time you are under an affirmative duty to deny your spouse’s claim that you’re married is when it’s being done in your presence and you’re, effectively, “admitting by silence”
and, frankly, I don’t give two craps about Canada. Nor did the OP.
Oh, I agree - it’s not a fantastic cite which is why I asked you to provide a better one.
Well, neither do I (at least as far as this thread goes); however, I believe to this point I’m the only person who’s provided a cite that ISN’T specific to Canada, which I admit I find mystifying, 'cus as interesting as the Canadian cites are, they really do nothing at all to answer the question in the OP.
Frankly, I don’t think its possible to answer the question in the OP correctly without more information because the couple is in Washington, DC which does recognize some sort of common law marriage and while we know the couple in question isn’t married married, I don’t believe we know if they have taken any steps to be common law married. Obviously, if they have, the answer to the OP would be different.
there are no cites to be had - common law marriage is a fact-heavy status. unless you go and pull up the specific case law which found that X, not Y, A, not B, etc. as facts which tended to establish common-law marriage, there’s nothing else you can say about it.
that’s why it’s common-law, not statutory, marriage, 
I know that you don’t give two craps about Canada, but if it’s a cite demonstrating this that you want, here’s a Canadian one: Pettkus v. Becker [1980] 2 S.C.R. 834. Wikipedia gives its usual quick explanation, but here’s the actual case if you’re interested.
I’d suggest that unless we get a Washington DC lawyer who does family law in here, that the OP’s question is going to be extremely difficult to answer. IME, family law is one area where things vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; and I have dealt with my share of clients whose knowledge of it comes from places outside the jurisdiction they are resident in. They are often quite surprised to find that what they thought they knew from “LA Law” and “Judge Judy” isn’t the way things work here.
I’m fairly confident that the jurisprudential principals used in Montana are similar to the ones used in Virginia. An entirely different country is another matter, which is why references and anecdotes to Canadian law are firmly in the “that’s nice, but not really helpful” category of things.
And this isn’t a family law issue - it’s a straight up question of constructively giving a non-tenant a property interest in realty apropos of nothing other than some iffy notions of “fairness”. If there are jurisdictions which do this, it’s going to be based on some idiosyncratic statute in that jurisdiction - it’s definitely not any baseline idea in the law that I’m aware of that tenancies can be created just because someone wasn’t wearing out their welcome fast enough.
I read your cite. Constructive trusts exist in the United States, as well. However, note that in that case you’re referring, there is actual equity to be done. Giving someone a property interest that requires ejectment, just because they are a guest for too long in one’s house, is not going to ever implicate a constructive trust situation.
Listen - I’m obviously out of my depth here in regards to knowledge of US law (and Canadian law, for that matter); however, if this particular scenario takes place in a state (or territory) which recognizes common law marriage, and grants particular rights to co-habiting spouses which are not afforded regular roommates, then this statement of yours is wrong.
Now, I have provided an admittedly wishy-washy cite that suggests that Washington, DC IS a territory that recognizes common law marriages and DOES grant particular rights in such cases. As the couple in the OP are in Washington, DC, and the OP has not discussed if the couple in question has jumped through any or all of the hoops required to grant them such status, it’s impossible to answer the question with any sort of accuracy. It’s certainly possible to discuss what might GENERALLY happen but you don’t seem to be doing that. You have asserted that your opinion is correct, but have not provided any back up information, going to far as to suggest that such information doesn’t exist.
Now listen, as a very smart poster up thread said, this is GQ, not 'What I think the law ought to be 101."
a) the OP specifically said “not married” so your marital scenario is inapposite.
people here are inventing facts about the existence of a common-law marriage, which the OP himself is specifically rejecting. he’s merely asking when a non-married, long-term couple splits up, does the non-owner/holder of the lease have any rights to the property that was his/her home during the period of the relationship. frankly, the palimony link was the most on-topic answer in this entire thread.
your post, #13, takes the cake with the bald assertion, based on some secondary source that you found,
which is again unsupported by the OP’s own hypothetical. If you’re basing it off of his Post #8, then you have thoroughly failed to demonstrate the requisite “intent” to be married which underpins a common-law marriage.
but that’s not even what the point of my post was… which leads to point
b) re-read the post which was what i was responding to with my comment about “cite that courts like to imply constructive interests in a parcel of real estate as a matter of equity?”
I’ll attach the pertinent part:
I am actually being partly bona fide when I ask for the cite, because giving someone a possessory interest in your property merely because they were staying at your place as a guest, for free, without any explicit or implicit agreement of anything, seems a bit… obtuse. Like I said in another thread, if this exists, it’s probably a wacky statutory idiosyncrasy in one state. If it’s not, I’m not saying it can’t be - but it’s just something that doesn’t strike me as right.
In the OP, the girlfriend is clearly not a guest, but is living there. Tenants most certainly do have rights of due process, and cannot be evicted by self-help measures.
I’m going to need a cite for the proposition that someone who lives gratuitously under the estate of another assumes the status as a “tenant”
“She lives there” isn’t enough to give her any rights that I am aware of.