## Facts

- Oscar Allen Knight and Reba Lavella Volkart-Knight lived together in Texas without obtaining a marriage license and without a formal ceremony.
- During the period of cohabitation, Reba filed federal income tax returns stating that she was single.
- Reba also signed as a co-borrower with Oscar on a loan and listed her marital status as single in connection with that transaction.
- Reba later sued for divorce, alleging that the parties had an informal (common-law) marriage.
- After a bench trial, the trial court found an informal marriage existed, granted a divorce, and made property and debt rulings based on the existence of a marital estate (including awarding Reba a restaurant and treating Oscar’s down payment as a gift).
- Oscar appealed, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the informal-marriage finding and the resulting divorce and property division.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was legally and factually sufficient to support the trial court’s finding that Oscar and Reba had an informal marriage under Texas law, including the requirement that they represented to others that they were married.

## Decision

- The court of appeals held the evidence was factually insufficient to support a required element of an informal marriage—representation to others that the parties were married (“holding out”).
- Because an informal marriage requires proof of each element, the failure of proof required reversal of the finding that a marriage existed.
- The court reversed the divorce decree and the related property division and remanded the case for further proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- Texas recognizes informal (common-law) marriage if the parties prove: (1) an agreement to be married, (2) living together in Texas as spouses after the agreement, and (3) representing to others that they were married; the elements must exist at the same time.
- “Holding out” requires evidence of a public representation of marriage that is consistent rather than occasional or limited to private statements between the parties.
- On factual-sufficiency review, an appellate court considers all the evidence and will set aside a finding when supporting proof is so weak, or contrary proof is so strong, that the finding is clearly wrong and unjust.
- Repeated statements of “single” status in formal documents (such as tax returns and loan paperwork) are strong evidence against a claim that the parties consistently represented themselves to others as married.

## Conclusion

Because Reba’s documented representations that she was single substantially conflicted with the claim that the couple consistently held themselves out as married, the court of appeals found the proof of informal marriage too weak, reversed the divorce judgment and property division that depended on that finding, and remanded for further proceedings.


Knight v. Volkart-Knight, 2001 WL 892250 (2001)