Rice v. Rice

Citations

• 31 Tex. 174

Syllabus

<p>In all Protestant countries marriage is almost universally regarded as a mere civil contract, subject to the control and regulation of the law of the state; nothing more is needed to constitute it a valid contract than capacity to contract, and mutual consent and mutual wills, expressed in the manner prescribed for its proper attestation and authentication.</p> <p>In Catholic countries, marriage being regarded as a sacrament, it is customary to require solemnization by a priest.</p> <p>It has been settled in Texas that, prior to the revolution, the ceremonies of the Eoman Catholic religion had to be complied with to give validity to marriage, and if those rites were not observed the union was meretricious and without any legal sanction.</p> <p>Marriages in Texas without the solemnization of the church were legalized by the ordinance of the 16th January, 1836, and the acts of the 5th June, 1837, and 5th February, 1841. (Paschal’s Dig., Arts. 4663-4664, Notes 1056, 1057,1057a.)</p> <p>These acts indicate not only the existence of irregular marriages while Texas was a Mexican province, and the necessity of some provision to mitigate and cure such social evils, but they were intended to legalize all other marriages where the parties were then living together in this relation, and to legitimate all children horn of such marriages before or after the passage of these acts.</p> <p>Where a man had married a wife before an alcalde, in 1831, with whom he lived two years and then separated from her, and was married to another in 1834, by a person without any official authority, and he continued to live with the second wife until 1857, when he deserted her and married a third, the legalizing acts of 1836, 1837, and 1841 made valid the second marriage, hut not the first, and the third was, adulterous. The property acquired during the second marriage was community property.</p> <p>In a divorce case the jury found the facts which constituted a good cause for divorce and the mar