Nothing in this chapter shall be deemed or taken to render any common law or other marriage, otherwise lawful, contracted before December first, nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, invalid by reason of the failure to take out a license as herein provided. But no marriage contracted on and after December first, nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, shall be valid unless the contracting parties shall have obtained a marriage license as required by section 37:1-2 of this Title, and unless, also, the marriage, after license duly issued therefor, shall have been performed by or before any person, religious society, institution or organization authorized by section 37:1-13 of this Title to solemnize marriages; and failure in any case to comply with both prerequisites aforesaid, which shall always be construed as mandatory and not merely directory, shall render the purported marriage absolutely void.
N.J. Stat. Ann. § 37:1-10
Common law and other marriages without license; validity
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case Freck v. Internal Revenue Service (1994)
Most recently applied in Hall v. MAAL (March 2010)
Amended by L.1939, c. 227, p. 624, s. 1, eff
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: New Jersey Legislature. Digitized from the New Jersey Legislature bulk statutes download. Reproduced from public-domain New Jersey statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.