Unmarried Equitable Distribution

In today's society, cohabitation by couples without marriage is common.  Additionally, at times there are situations that arise where parties live in a bigamous marriage or potentially a void marriage.  Regardless, there is law in Mississippi to deal with this situation.  Mississippi law sanctions an equitable division of property accumulated by two persons as the result of their joint efforts. See Cotton v. Cotton, 44 So.3d 371, 374 (¶¶7-10) (Miss. Ct. App. 2010); Wooldridge v. Wooldridge, 856 So.2d 446, 452 (¶17) (Miss. Ct. App. 2003); see also Pickens v. Pickens, 490 So.2d 872, 875-76 (Miss. 1986); Taylor v. Taylor, 317 So.2d 422, 423 (Miss. 1975); Chrismond v. Chrismond, 211 Miss. 746, 757, 52 So.2d 624, 629 (1951). As the Mississippi Supreme Court stated in Pickens, "our law authorizes and sanctions an equitable division of property accumulated by two persons as a result of their joint efforts. This would be the case were a common[-]law business partnership breaking up." Pickens, 490 So.2d at 875.  This line of cases is helpful if you have parties in a long term relationship that are not married but have accumulated stuff that needs to be divided.