Smith v. Smith’s Empirical Analysis
1945
Citation profile
2 district · 29 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 41 later decisions — most recently July 2013 · most notably Beck v. Beck (1971), 361 So. 2d 90 - Piel v. Brown (1978)
2 district · 29 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on McDaniel v. McElvy · Wilkerson v. Wilkerson · Phillips v. Ashworth · Kane v. McCown · Rogers v. McLeskey
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 41 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘It is the well-settled rule that if parties in good faith marry when in fact a legal impediment exists to their marriage, and they continue to cohabit as man and wife after the removal of the impediment of their lawful union, the law presumes a common-law marriage.’ [Hill v. Lindsey, 223 Ala. 550, 552 , 137 So. 395, 397 (1931).] To like effect is Prince v. Edwards, 175 Ala. 532 , [537— 38,] 57 So. 714, 715 [ (1912) ]. “It is established in this jurisdiction that, ‘Where parties who are incompetent to marry enter an illicit relation, with a manifest desire and intention to live in a matrimonial union, rather than in a state of concubinage, and the obstacle to their marriage is subsequently removed, their continued cohabitation raises a presumption of an actual marriage immediately after the removal of the obstacle, and warrants a finding to that effect.’ Prince v. Edwards, supra.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“. It is the well-settled rule that if parties in good faith marry when in fact a legal impediment exists to their marrige, and they continue to cohabit as man and wife after the removal of the impediment of their lawful union, the law presumes a common-law marriage. . . .” The evidence in the case at bar brings”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“without regard to what the parties consider the legal effect of such relation to be.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.