By Matt Ferner

A Texas probate judge recognized a common law marriage between two women this week, granting that the women were in fact legal spouses and defying objections from the state attorney general in the process. The ruling is a historic first for the Lone Star State.

On Tuesday, Travis County Probate Judge Guy Herman approved an agreement between Sonemaly Phrasavath and the family of her late partner, Stella Powell, who died of colon cancer in 2014, to split Powell’s assets. The ruling simultaneously recognized the couple’s common law marriage, the Houston Chronicle first reported.

Brian Thompson, attorney for Phrasavath, told The Huffington Post that his client can finally move on with her life with this critical ruling.

“Sonemaly is pleased that Judge Herman’s ruling acknowledges her marriage to Stella Powell and allows her to move forward from the tragedy of losing her wife,” Thompson said. 

Phrasavath and Powell met in 2004 and were married in 2008 in Texas — long before the Supreme Court’s June ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states and ended the bans in states like Texas. When Powell died in 2014, a legal battle began between Phrasavath and Powell’s family over her deceased partner’s estate.

In Texas, a common law marriage is legally valid and includes the same rights enjoyed in other marriages, given that the adult couple agrees to marry, lives together for an indeterminate time and communicates to other people that they are, in fact, a married couple. The Houston Chronicle adds that, in 2008, Phrasavath and Powell also held a marriage ceremony with a Zen Buddhist priest in the state.

However, because same-sex marriage was still banned at the time, Powell’s family argued that Phrasavath had no right to Powell’s estate. But Herman ruled in 2014 that Phrasavath was entitled to her partner’s …read more

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