It is something that you may've come across in other countries whereby a couple living together have the same rights as man and wife i.e. 50% split etc. Here's a bit of a brief on the way in which it worked in Scotland up until 1939.
https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/article/irregular-marriage-and-kirk-session-scotlandCheers
Corey
Edit: in case the link breaks down the line:
"Introduction
“The law of Scotland as to marriage was this – it adopted the principle that consent alone made marriage… The law of Scotland did not require the presence of a priest, nor the intervention of any religious ceremony. The law of Scotland considered marriage to be a civil contract, but it did not provide any particular mode by which that contract was to be proved” – Hansard, discussion on bill, Registration of Births and Marriages (Scotland) Bill August 1848.
The recent release of National Records of Scotland’s (NRS) kirk session minutes on ScotlandsPeople, affords the chance to examine these forms of marriage, the impact it could have on people’s lives and how it was recorded by the Church of Scotland.
The laws of marriage were quite different in England and Scotland. In Scotland, marriage was based on the principles of mutual consent and both ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ marriages were recognised by law. Regular marriages were those performed by the clergy after the publication of banns. There were three forms of irregular marriage in Scotland:
1. Per verba de praesenti – A present exchange of consent by words by both parties to be married, privately or informally given, to be man and wife. Ideally this exchange would be performed in front of witnesses; a marriage contract without was still legal but much more difficult to prove.
2. Per verba de futuro subsequente copula – A promise of future marriage without a present exchange of consent, ‘followed at a subsequent time by carnal intercourse’.
3. Marriage by cohabitation with habit and repute. Generally this meant a couple living together and publicly behaving as though they are man and wife. This could include being affectionate, and referring to each other as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. Also known as a ‘common law’ marriage, this was not so much a form of marriage, but a separate type of evidence which could be used to establish that a marriage had taken place. If a couple had lived and presented themselves as married for an extended period of time, there was a presumption that there had been a previous exchange of consent.
Irregular marriages remained valid until 1939 because the Scots held to the simple doctrine that any two unmarried people of lawful age (until 1929 12 for a girl, 14 for a boy) that wished to get married, if they were physically capable and not within the prohibited degrees of kinship, ‘and they both freely expressed this wish and freely accepted each other in marriage, then they were married’ (T. C. Smout). Consent made the marriage, not the clergy nor the civil official, and there were no restrictions on where and when the marriage might take place, nor a requirement that witnesses be present to prove its validity."
