[00:00:00] Speaker 04: The next and final case for this morning is Corcoran versus OMP 24-2349. [00:00:05] Speaker 04: Ms. [00:00:09] Speaker 04: Lopez? [00:00:10] Speaker 04: Councilor Lopez, you have reserved four minutes of time for your vote. [00:00:14] Speaker 00: Yes, thank you, Your Honor. [00:00:16] Speaker 04: You may proceed. [00:00:16] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:00:17] Speaker 00: Good morning, and may it please the Court. [00:00:19] Speaker 00: This appeal really boils down to one very narrow question. [00:00:23] Speaker 00: Did my client, Sarah Corcoran, establish by preponderant evidence that she and her husband, Tony, [00:00:29] Speaker 00: mutually agreed to be permanent spousal-like partners during the period in question such that they are common law married under the law of Washington, DC. [00:00:39] Speaker 04: What's the legal question you're bringing to us? [00:00:42] Speaker 00: The legal question is twofold. [00:00:44] Speaker 00: Number one is whether the government, whether the OPM and MSPB's decision was contrary to law or unsupported by substantial evidence. [00:00:54] Speaker 00: Those are the two questions that we have submitted to your honors. [00:00:59] Speaker 00: Now, without dispute, the government credited Sarah's unrepented testimony and all the other evidence, documentary and otherwise, that she and Tony referred to each other in the present tense as husband and wife, and that they were, quote, in an existing commitment prior to their civil ceremony in May 2020. [00:01:19] Speaker 00: Despite crediting this evidence, the administrative law judge found as a matter of fact [00:01:24] Speaker 00: without any evidence to back it up, that Sarah and Tony did not refer to each other as husband and wife in the solemn sense. [00:01:32] Speaker 04: But quote. [00:01:32] Speaker 04: So you're not asking us to go by piece by piece of the evidence that the administrative law judge considered and to review that. [00:01:41] Speaker 04: Is that right? [00:01:42] Speaker 00: Correct. [00:01:42] Speaker 00: We're not asking for a de novo review. [00:01:44] Speaker 00: I don't think that's appropriate. [00:01:45] Speaker 00: The standard on appeal is contrary to law or unsupported by substantial evidence. [00:01:52] Speaker 00: So the quote was, terms of endearment is how the judge perceived those very solemn words, husband and wife. [00:02:00] Speaker 00: We submit that this was error under Supreme Court President Boaz and Moore, and as a matter of DC law. [00:02:07] Speaker 00: To remind your honors, we cited these cases in our opening brief and reply brief. [00:02:11] Speaker 00: The Boaz and Moore cases stand for the proposition that a fact finder may not use the disbelief of testimony as the sole basis for finding that the opposite is true. [00:02:22] Speaker 00: And to put that in some other words, a witness's testimony, if it's not believed, the fact finder may simply disregard it. [00:02:30] Speaker 00: But the discredited testimony is not considered a sufficient basis for drawing the contrary conclusion. [00:02:38] Speaker 03: So do you agree that Ms. [00:02:39] Speaker 03: Corcoran did not file taxes jointly until after they were ceremonially married? [00:02:44] Speaker 00: Yes. [00:02:45] Speaker 00: We do concede that. [00:02:47] Speaker 00: The government doesn't dispute the Supreme Court precedent and points to no evidence, because there was none, that terms of endearment was the way that they were using husband and wife. [00:02:58] Speaker 00: And under DC law, they would have had to have submitted such evidence, because DC courts do not consider those terms to be terms of endearment. [00:03:07] Speaker 00: Under DC law, as we submitted in our briefs, they actually are considered as evidence of entering into a common law marriage. [00:03:17] Speaker 00: This makes complete sense, Your Honor, because Your Honors. [00:03:20] Speaker 03: What is your best case that supports your claim for common law marriage here in DC? [00:03:25] Speaker 00: So we would submit that the Cleary versus Cleary case, which was decided in 2024, supports our case because of the very simple conversation, keeping in mind that it's a particularly lenient standard under Washington DC law, which Cleary repeatedly or repeated, and that there is no set formula. [00:03:47] Speaker 00: to establish common law marriage. [00:03:49] Speaker 00: In that case, common law marriage was actually established, if the court credited it on remand, the following simple conversation. [00:03:57] Speaker 00: Quote, let's be common law married, OK. [00:04:01] Speaker 00: Also, we would submit national union fire versus Britain supports our case, because that minimalistic conversation in that case sufficed. [00:04:09] Speaker 00: Quote, he said he was my husband, and I said I was his wife, so I just figured we was married. [00:04:15] Speaker 00: That was enough under the particularly lenient standard in Washington, DC. [00:04:20] Speaker 00: The Coates versus Watts case, admittedly it's in a footnote, and it was not the forefront of the case because the court found that there were reasons why the common law marriage wasn't established as a matter of law. [00:04:33] Speaker 00: But the following conversation were pointed to as, quote, words of present agreement. [00:04:39] Speaker 00: She said, I want you, and I want you to come and live with me, we as one, that we be as man and wife. [00:04:45] Speaker 00: And I said, OK. [00:04:48] Speaker 00: The government doesn't confront those cases, by the way. [00:04:51] Speaker 00: It really focuses on the fact that the judge found Sarah's testimony to be inconsistent and vague. [00:04:58] Speaker 00: The conversations that Sarah testified to, we submit, were not vague. [00:05:02] Speaker 00: And in any event, the credited testimony, or at least didn't really address some of the salient facts, [00:05:09] Speaker 00: where Sarah was not inconsistent. [00:05:12] Speaker 00: And I'm just going to quote a couple of those. [00:05:14] Speaker 00: Sarah testified, I know that we had a conversation that we considered ourselves to be husband and wife. [00:05:21] Speaker 00: They agreed to be each other's partners for eternity. [00:05:25] Speaker 00: And she recounted some details about that, where she was talking about how her husband [00:05:31] Speaker 00: wanted to be an Egyptian pharaoh and she his queen in the sense that Egyptians in past lives had eternity. [00:05:39] Speaker 04: So your argument is that these statements that the judge found to be terms of endearment, they don't amount to substantial evidence? [00:05:48] Speaker 00: We submit that the lack of substantial evidence was for the finding that they were terms of endearment. [00:05:54] Speaker 00: The other portion of our argument is that it was contrary to law, DC law. [00:05:58] Speaker 00: And I would submit one other portion of that is that the judge focused on the official ceremony in a way that we submit was error. [00:06:11] Speaker 00: It did exactly what the law does not allow it to do, which is using that official ceremony together with some tidbits of testimony to find that Sarah and Tony were only engaged before the civil ceremony. [00:06:23] Speaker 00: The Serevich case is a case out of the DC Court of Appeals. [00:06:28] Speaker 00: And that case made clear that you cannot use it. [00:06:30] Speaker 02: Which case is this? [00:06:31] Speaker 00: This is the Serevich versus Stojkov. [00:06:34] Speaker 00: I'm probably murdering that pronunciation. [00:06:38] Speaker 00: A formal ceremony is not conclusive evidence that no common law marriage existed in the time period before the civil ceremony. [00:06:48] Speaker 00: In fact, in that case, the court admonished judges [00:06:52] Speaker 00: to focus only on whether there was preponderant evidence that the parties mutually agreed in present tense words to be permanent partners during that period in question. [00:07:02] Speaker 02: Ms. [00:07:02] Speaker 02: Lopez, let me ask you a question. [00:07:05] Speaker 02: In your brief and argument today, you do an excellent job of marshaling the evidence that supports your position in this case. [00:07:15] Speaker 02: On the other hand, the government marshals the evidence on its side. [00:07:20] Speaker 02: So it's up to the MSPB at the end of the day to make the decision. [00:07:26] Speaker 02: And it's a tough case, difficult case. [00:07:30] Speaker 02: But who is to step in and say that the MSPB decision isn't supported by substantial evidence? [00:07:37] Speaker 02: That's what is concerning me a bit. [00:07:40] Speaker 00: I understand your Honor's point. [00:07:41] Speaker 00: And we do recognize that there was a finding by the judge that there was evidence of engagement. [00:07:48] Speaker 00: Sarah didn't run away from that. [00:07:49] Speaker 00: She actually addressed that in her testimony. [00:07:51] Speaker 00: She said, listen, I get that this is not the typical order that men go in to be committing to each other as husband and wife. [00:08:00] Speaker 00: Then there's an engagement ring and party. [00:08:02] Speaker 00: And then there's a civil ceremony. [00:08:03] Speaker 00: She admitted this. [00:08:05] Speaker 00: And she said, this is part of the continuum that me and Tony were on in their particular relationship. [00:08:13] Speaker 00: And again, that is one part of our argument, [00:08:17] Speaker 00: non-substantial evidence. [00:08:18] Speaker 00: The other part of our argument is that this was contrary to law, DC law. [00:08:23] Speaker 00: It makes very clear that it's a lenient standard, no set formula. [00:08:27] Speaker 00: The use of the expressions husband and wife in common parlance. [00:08:31] Speaker 00: I mean, I can see a girlfriend calling a boyfriend, sweetie, husband. [00:08:35] Speaker 00: But husband, that's a very solemn term. [00:08:38] Speaker 00: And there's a reason why DC courts look at those terms and the usage in the present tense, because they do carry legal weight. [00:08:46] Speaker 00: They carry meaning. [00:08:47] Speaker 00: And that's why they're looked at. [00:08:49] Speaker 00: I also wanted to focus, Your Honors, on one aspect of the testimony that I think the court below aired in giving short shrift. [00:09:00] Speaker 00: And that was the testimony of their auto mechanic, Marcus Bissassier. [00:09:06] Speaker 00: He testified that Tony and Sarah introduced themselves to him as husband and wife. [00:09:13] Speaker 03: Do you have an appendix page you wanted to point us to? [00:09:15] Speaker 00: Yes. [00:09:16] Speaker 00: I was just looking for that in my notes. [00:09:24] Speaker 00: Well, I will find it for you on my rebuttal, and I'll give you that exact site for it. [00:09:31] Speaker 00: But in the opinion, the judge [00:09:36] Speaker 00: gave it short shrift and said, that should be given less weight because it's in the context of a business transaction. [00:09:43] Speaker 00: We would submit that it should be given at least equal weight, if not more weight, because this was a completely disinterested witness. [00:09:50] Speaker 00: And it would be improbable that two people would introduce themselves as husband and wife to a service vendor if they had not mutually agreed to be in that kind of a relationship. [00:10:00] Speaker 00: So I will get that appendix cite for your honor. [00:10:03] Speaker 00: Before I sit down and let my colleague argue, I do want to make another point about the government's ruling, which is that it was, in our view, very schizophrenic. [00:10:14] Speaker 00: On the one hand, it found that the official ceremony and the out-of-context testimony about this engagement period demonstrated that Sarah and Tony were merely engaged. [00:10:25] Speaker 00: But on the other hand, it simultaneously held, quote, the couple may have seen marriage as a formality. [00:10:31] Speaker 00: or confirmation of their existing commitment. [00:10:34] Speaker 00: And we would submit having an existing commitment with a civil ceremony as a mere formality is exactly what common law marriage is. [00:10:42] Speaker 00: I'll reserve the rest of my time. [00:10:43] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:10:45] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:10:48] Speaker 04: Catherine Fleming. [00:10:49] Speaker 01: Good morning, Your Honors. [00:10:53] Speaker 01: May I please support? [00:10:55] Speaker 01: Your Honor, in this case, the plaintiff failed to demonstrate before the board that there was an express agreement [00:11:01] Speaker 01: that the agreement was in the present sense and that it was mutual. [00:11:04] Speaker 01: Those are all things required under DC law. [00:11:07] Speaker 01: And I would disagree with my colleague characterizing the requirements of that law as permissive. [00:11:11] Speaker 01: In fact, it requires an examination of all of these things. [00:11:15] Speaker 01: In fact, she's in her briefs and just today suggested that the use of the term husband and wife, or hubby and wifey, as was the case in many examples used here, is sufficient to demonstrate an intention to be common law married. [00:11:30] Speaker 01: My colleague can identify no case in which those were the only facts that the DC Circuit relied upon to find a common law marriage. [00:11:38] Speaker 01: And that's for good reason, because it's not enough to find an express agreement. [00:11:43] Speaker 01: And we see that throughout the evidence that Ms. [00:11:46] Speaker 01: Corcoran has offered in this case. [00:11:49] Speaker 01: She, in fact, said, I cannot tell you the specific conversation. [00:11:53] Speaker 01: I can't speak of a specific detail I had from a conversation two to three years ago. [00:11:59] Speaker 01: But I know that we have the conversation that we consider ourselves husband and wife. [00:12:03] Speaker 01: The fact that she cannot identify that conversation distinguishes this case clearly from situations like Cleary, where the court expressly found, albeit indicating a genuine issue of material fact and not a conclusion that there was, in fact, a common marriage [00:12:20] Speaker 01: that the statement it relied upon was, let's be common law married and OK. [00:12:26] Speaker 01: We're going to do a thing. [00:12:27] Speaker 01: I agree. [00:12:28] Speaker 01: That is a conversation that Miss Corcoran could not testify to in this case. [00:12:33] Speaker 01: And the fact that she can't. [00:12:34] Speaker 01: Let me ask you what? [00:12:36] Speaker 02: I'm sorry to interrupt you in the middle of your flow of conscience there. [00:12:40] Speaker 02: But I did have one question. [00:12:42] Speaker 02: I didn't want to forget it myself. [00:12:44] Speaker 02: What is your answer to Ms. [00:12:48] Speaker 02: Lopez's argument that there are errors of law here, in particular her citation to the Supreme Court decision, the Bose case and all? [00:12:56] Speaker 02: In other words, I understand her saying, [00:12:58] Speaker 02: There was an error of law here because the board disbelieved someone, but then used that disbelief to prove a positive fact in favor of the government. [00:13:11] Speaker 02: What's your response to that? [00:13:12] Speaker 01: Well, Judge Schall, my colleague, I believe, is misinterpreting that case. [00:13:16] Speaker 01: In Bose, the court agreed that the witness testifying differently than the facts supported [00:13:27] Speaker 01: enabled them to conclude that it was false, was false testimony. [00:13:30] Speaker 01: What the court declined to do was take the additional step of finding malice. [00:13:34] Speaker 01: No one's trying to prove an additional intent or mens rea here. [00:13:38] Speaker 01: No one in the record or before the board concluded that Ms. [00:13:42] Speaker 01: Corcoran had some sort of additional intent or mens rea that we use the disbelieved testimony to prove. [00:13:50] Speaker 01: Rather, [00:13:52] Speaker 01: This is the case where Ms. [00:13:54] Speaker 01: Corcoran's testimony was not credible when viewed in conjunction with the other testimony that she gave. [00:14:01] Speaker 01: The fact that you can look at prior and consistent testimony to assess credibility is well established in the law. [00:14:07] Speaker 01: And this court in Haiti, I'm going to mispronounce that. [00:14:10] Speaker 01: I apologize. [00:14:11] Speaker 01: It looked at the Hill End decision that set out the factors for determining credibility. [00:14:15] Speaker 01: and expressly found inconsistent testimony is one of those things. [00:14:18] Speaker 01: So the board wasn't trying to prove an additional fact. [00:14:22] Speaker 01: It was assessing the credibility of Ms. [00:14:24] Speaker 01: Corcoran's testimony, which changed during the course of her testimony before the board. [00:14:29] Speaker 01: And that's what makes it different. [00:14:30] Speaker 01: Bose does not apply, nor did the other two cases that Ms. [00:14:34] Speaker 01: Corcoran cited, which both also looked at the application of discredited testimony towards a mens rea element. [00:14:42] Speaker 01: Neither of those apply here, too. [00:14:43] Speaker 01: There simply is no legal error from that description. [00:14:49] Speaker 01: And likewise, as I mentioned, the fact that the board found insufficient the use of the terms husband and wife by the two purported members of the couple, the decision that was not enough is not sufficient to violate DC law. [00:15:09] Speaker 01: has never had a case in which the use of those terms was sufficient. [00:15:16] Speaker 01: In addition to the fact that she was vague in describing the conversation that she relies upon to show agreement or express agreement, the timing was also something that she could not identify. [00:15:26] Speaker 01: And this is critical because, of course, the whole point of common law marriage and the end of the third element requires that the couple show or the proponent show that, in fact, [00:15:39] Speaker 01: They had all the qualities of marriage, albeit not in a formal license that was approved by the state. [00:15:45] Speaker 01: One of those qualities, as I think most of us would agree, is that we tend to celebrate our anniversaries when we're married. [00:15:50] Speaker 01: Miss Corcoran could not tell you what her wedding anniversary is, because she does not know at what time the conversation she had with the decedent occurred. [00:16:00] Speaker 01: So the fact that she can't tell us the time at which this conversation occurred is important. [00:16:06] Speaker 01: She also conflates in her testimony a fact that was noted by the board, conversations about her engagement, her pending ceremonial marriage, and what she attaches as her common law marriage conversations. [00:16:21] Speaker 01: And while we do not argue, nor did the board find, that the existence of a ceremonial marriage precludes a finding of a common law marriage, it can be instructive. [00:16:34] Speaker 01: And in fact, even in the case where [00:16:37] Speaker 01: that my colleague just cited in Kovacic, I believe, the court expressly found that the intent to marry someone someday tends to show the opposite of that claim. [00:16:59] Speaker 01: And so again, it's not conclusive, nor did the board find that it was conclusive. [00:17:03] Speaker 01: But it certainly noted the fact that there was clearly an intention [00:17:07] Speaker 01: to go forward with both an engagement and a ceremonial marriage. [00:17:10] Speaker 01: That was an intention that was celebrated with Miss Corcoran's friends. [00:17:13] Speaker 01: It was something they planned for. [00:17:15] Speaker 01: They had a party. [00:17:16] Speaker 01: Those were all steps taken that showed the value that the couple appeared to place on a ceremonial marriage. [00:17:24] Speaker 01: And so it tends to be in tension with the conclusion that there was a common law marriage already in place. [00:17:31] Speaker 01: But even if you didn't agree with that, the board still looked at the fact that [00:17:36] Speaker 01: Miss Corcoran could not clearly delineate conversations that marked the engagement or the progress through its ceremonial marriage compared to those she relied upon for showing the common law marriage. [00:17:49] Speaker 01: And you can see this in the record. [00:17:59] Speaker 01: She testifies that the Bahrain diamond necklace was a symbol and a gift in furtherance of her agreement to be presently married. [00:18:09] Speaker 01: But then she later testifies also before the board that she became engaged with that diamond necklace. [00:18:14] Speaker 01: So she's using the same events or conversations to indicate both engagement and the present marriage. [00:18:22] Speaker 01: Those two things are not consistent. [00:18:26] Speaker 01: The nature of the use of the endearments for the appellations in this case is not consistent with a common law marriage. [00:18:36] Speaker 01: For instance, Ms. [00:18:37] Speaker 01: Corcoran testified that shortly after she met her husband, she called him hubby. [00:18:44] Speaker 01: She referred to him as her husband. [00:18:46] Speaker 01: That is not consistent with her later testimony that it was quite some many months later. [00:18:51] Speaker 04: Did they ever indicate in any type of correspondence or interaction with governmental agencies as Mr. and Mrs.? [00:19:02] Speaker 01: I don't believe that they do, Your Honor. [00:19:03] Speaker 01: In fact, as I believe the court asked my colleague about her tax returns, they did not file jointly. [00:19:09] Speaker 01: There's no indication that they were on property together. [00:19:11] Speaker 01: They didn't pay for each other's houses. [00:19:13] Speaker 01: They maintained separate residences. [00:19:15] Speaker 01: And there doesn't appear to have been any. [00:19:17] Speaker 04: They did pay for each other's car repairs. [00:19:19] Speaker 01: There seems to have been some gifts from Mr. Shenella flowing to Ms. [00:19:23] Speaker 01: Corcoran's on specific occasions. [00:19:25] Speaker 01: I believe he also contributed some for medical expenses. [00:19:28] Speaker 01: That's on the record. [00:19:29] Speaker 01: But for instance, they didn't pay bills together. [00:19:32] Speaker 01: They didn't pay. [00:19:32] Speaker 01: They were on a mortgage together. [00:19:38] Speaker 01: Ms. [00:19:38] Speaker 01: Corcoran relies on National Union. [00:19:40] Speaker 01: In that case, there was an insurance policy that named the decedent as a spouse. [00:19:47] Speaker 01: There was a mortgage that showed them both on the mortgage. [00:19:51] Speaker 01: There was a landlady reporting that there was mail directed to the purported wife and her married name at their address. [00:20:00] Speaker 01: There was a lot of indicia legally that they had joined together as one entity. [00:20:05] Speaker 04: In this case, [00:20:09] Speaker 04: They lived in DC, right? [00:20:12] Speaker 04: They lived partially in DC. [00:20:15] Speaker 01: Your Honor, the record reflects that they lived in two different residences during the course of the period they ascribed to the common law marriage. [00:20:22] Speaker 01: They lived partially in Virginia and partially in DC. [00:20:27] Speaker 01: So another example of a case where the agreement was more clear is a case that Ms. [00:20:35] Speaker 01: Corcoran relied upon, East v. East. [00:20:37] Speaker 01: In that case, [00:20:38] Speaker 01: Again, at a dinner party, the statement that the court ultimately credited in support of the marriage was, from here on in, Margaret and I are married. [00:20:46] Speaker 01: Said to witnesses, the witnesses testified to that effect. [00:20:49] Speaker 01: There is no such testimony on the record here. [00:20:52] Speaker 01: Instead, what we see is a lot of conflicting testimony from the witnesses that Ms. [00:20:58] Speaker 01: Corcoran offered. [00:20:59] Speaker 01: And that testimony not only undermines the claims that she's made about the timing of her [00:21:07] Speaker 01: engagement in marriage. [00:21:09] Speaker 01: But they also suggest that there was a mutuality problem. [00:21:11] Speaker 01: You can't have an agreement between two parties unless it's mutual. [00:21:15] Speaker 01: And in this case, Miss Anderson, Miss Corcoran's mother, testified that even after the time period in which Miss Corcoran claimed that they were common non-married, Mr. Chanel asked her for her daughter's hand in marriage. [00:21:30] Speaker 01: It's not consistent. [00:21:31] Speaker 01: She also referred to Mr. Chanel as her daughter's fiance, again, during the period when Miss Corcoran is saying that they were married. [00:21:37] Speaker 01: She then recounted a conversation with Mr. Shinnella, where he said he was, perspective in the future, going to add her to the deed to his house. [00:21:46] Speaker 01: He didn't take the steps necessary to do that while they were common-law married. [00:21:50] Speaker 01: One can only assume that he was waiting for the ceremonial marriage. [00:21:55] Speaker 01: Likewise, the same situation with his will, which clearly vents to Ms. [00:21:58] Speaker 01: Anderson. [00:21:59] Speaker 01: Ms. [00:21:59] Speaker 01: Allen, whose testimony Ms. [00:22:01] Speaker 01: Corcoran also relied upon, testified that she had a conversation with Mr. Shinnella when he [00:22:07] Speaker 01: said, prospectively, quote, he wanted to marry Sarah and was going to. [00:22:12] Speaker 01: This was a future event that was contemplated. [00:22:15] Speaker 01: It was not a present reality. [00:22:18] Speaker 01: The fact that Mr. Cinella did not go forward with the legal paperwork necessary to add her to his will or to join their bank accounts or to join their finances, to join their residences, to join their taxes, all of these things tend to show that, at least for Mr. Cinella, he [00:22:34] Speaker 01: did not consider themselves married in the sense that the common law would require. [00:22:38] Speaker 01: Unless the court has further questions, I would just close here with the idea that there are a lot of ways that people can express and have intimate relationships with people that are not marriage. [00:22:54] Speaker 01: And one of the things that you risk when you go a common law route is that people won't agree with you that what your particular relationship included [00:23:05] Speaker 01: in fact, was a marriage. [00:23:06] Speaker 01: They take that risk when they go that route instead of getting a formal ceremony from the court. [00:23:14] Speaker 01: And regrettably, there doesn't seem to be a way to fix that from the court right now. [00:23:20] Speaker 01: So with that, we would ask the court to affirm the board's decision. [00:23:24] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:23:30] Speaker 00: Your Honor, the testimony of the auto mechanic appears at appendix 105 to 109. [00:23:38] Speaker 00: In DC, common law marriage is alive and well. [00:23:41] Speaker 00: And the ending comment of my colleague shows kind of a predisposition against it. [00:23:49] Speaker 00: But it exists. [00:23:50] Speaker 00: It's allowed in DC, and there's a particularly lenient standard. [00:23:54] Speaker 00: A lot of the comments that were made by my colleague struck me as, [00:23:59] Speaker 00: taking into account if you had a 10-year relationship. [00:24:02] Speaker 00: This was an 18-month relationship. [00:24:05] Speaker 00: And unfortunately, Tony killed himself a month after they got common law married. [00:24:10] Speaker 00: A couple of things also that I wanted to point out. [00:24:13] Speaker 02: A month after they were ceremonially married. [00:24:14] Speaker 00: After they were ceremonially married. [00:24:16] Speaker 00: Yes, please. [00:24:17] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:24:19] Speaker 00: Tony called Sarah his wife, to her friend, their friend, Morgan, as well as their auto mechanic. [00:24:26] Speaker 00: So the fact that he referred to [00:24:29] Speaker 00: her as a fiance to the mother. [00:24:31] Speaker 00: We don't deny that fact, but there are other instances in this record that suggest that he absolutely thought that she and he had mutually consented to be in a different sort of relationship than an engagement prior to the civil serum. [00:24:49] Speaker 00: There are other instances of facts in this record that support, besides just calling each other husband and wife, as you all touched on, the shared finances, discussions with friends, calling husband and wife and referring to each other in communications. [00:25:08] Speaker 00: You asked, Your Honor, about the government communications. [00:25:11] Speaker 00: Again, taking into account that this was an 18-month relationship, [00:25:15] Speaker 00: I think we're going to find less instances where they were referring to each other in government communications. [00:25:20] Speaker 00: However, there was an instance where Tony emailed Sarah saying, you're an authorized user as my wifey on a membership with the Army Navy Club. [00:25:31] Speaker 00: So that does strike me as a situation where you wouldn't refer to somebody as wifey in an endearing sense. [00:25:38] Speaker 00: The Bowes case, my colleague tried to distinguish it on the facts, but we cite it for the legal tenant. [00:25:45] Speaker 00: We're not trying to say that the facts are apples to apples. [00:25:49] Speaker 00: Sarah absolutely testified that she knew the timing. [00:25:53] Speaker 00: She said, I'm going by seasons here. [00:25:55] Speaker 00: She admitted, I don't have details that I can share with you. [00:25:58] Speaker 00: I don't have an exact date. [00:26:00] Speaker 00: But she said, it was cold, and it was the winter. [00:26:03] Speaker 00: So she did have something that she could testify to as to timing. [00:26:08] Speaker 00: And in any event, the timing question is not the be all and end all, as the Gill case made clear. [00:26:15] Speaker 00: As I already told Your Honors, Sarah did not hide from the fact that she had the engagement and the ring and the party and that these things may seem awkward to others. [00:26:26] Speaker 00: But she conceded that. [00:26:29] Speaker 00: She said this was just part of the continuum that we were on. [00:26:31] Speaker 00: And frankly, there was nothing in the record to suggest that they had a big party after the ceremonial marriage. [00:26:39] Speaker 03: Counsel, just a housekeeping question. [00:26:41] Speaker 03: What period of time were they living together in DC versus Virginia? [00:26:45] Speaker 00: So it was shared time. [00:26:46] Speaker 00: It wasn't one and then the other. [00:26:48] Speaker 00: He had a house in Virginia. [00:26:49] Speaker 00: Her mother actually had a house in DC. [00:26:52] Speaker 00: So the fact that they didn't contribute together to the expenses of the DC house is irrelevant. [00:26:57] Speaker 00: Sheridan, this was owned by her mother. [00:26:59] Speaker 00: She lived in a lovely, as she put it in her testimony, a lovely, large wing of her mother's house in DC. [00:27:06] Speaker 00: And they would go back and forth between the two residences. [00:27:11] Speaker 00: So finally, I'd like to focus on the Gill case, which says that actions speak louder than words. [00:27:17] Speaker 00: You don't have to say, OK, we're common law married. [00:27:19] Speaker 00: That's very hyper aware of perhaps some legal niceties that just normal people aren't aware of. [00:27:26] Speaker 00: But what the Gill case focused on was actions are louder than words. [00:27:30] Speaker 00: And we would submit that the actions here in the 18 months they spent together were very loud. [00:27:35] Speaker 00: And the way that they introduced each other, the way that they talked to each other, [00:27:39] Speaker 00: shows that they consider themselves to be permanent, lifelong partners in the spousal sense under the laws of DC. [00:27:47] Speaker 00: Thank you. [00:27:48] Speaker 04: Thank you. [00:27:49] Speaker 04: We thank the parties this morning for their arguments, and we now stand in recess.