Living Trust With

A common-law marriage, like any other marriage, is a contract. The parties must agree between themselves to be married. They show their agreement by acting like a married couple: living together, treating each other as a spouse, and holding themselves out in the community as a married couple.

There are basically four types of alimony in South Carolina: permanent periodic alimony, rehabilitative alimony, lump sum alimony and reimbursement alimony. Alimony is designed to allow the supported spouse to maintain the marital lifestyle.

In an equitable distribution state such as South Carolina, only marital property is subject to division. Marital property includes any assets which the couple acquired together during the marriage.As long as the couple bought the home or other asset with marital funds, it is considered to be marital property.

Marital property is all the real and personal property acquired by the parties during the marriage and owned at the date of filing for divorce. It doesn't matter if the family home bought during the marriage in only one spouse's name; the other spouse also has a right to it.

South Carolina's intestacy law says that if you die without a Will and have children and a spouse, your spouse will receive one-half of your intestate estate and your children will receive the other half. If there are no children, the surviving spouse would receive the entire intestate estate.

There are five grounds for divorce in South Carolina: adultery, habitual drunkenness, physical cruelty, abandonment and no fault, which is based on the parties living separate and apart for at least one year. Mental abuse/cruelty is not a basis for divorce in South Carolina.

Houses and other real estate (even if they're mortgaged) stock, bond, and other security accounts held by brokerages (but think about naming a TOD beneficiary instead) small business interests (stock in a closely held corporation, partnership interests, or limited liability company shares)