What is (or was) the difference between Louisiana&#39;s Civil Code and Revised Statutes? As an example, Title V, Chapter 1 of the 1869 Civil Code was about the grounds for divorce. (This Chapter appears to be exactly the same in the 1882 Civil Code.) Section 1190 of the 1870 Revised Statutes was also about the grounds for divorce. (This section appears to be exactly the same in the 1876 Revised Statutes.) The wording in both are very similar, but not identical. For example, the Revised Statutes required that for divorce on the grounds of abandonment, the abandonment must have been "for the space of five years." In contrast, the Civil Code had no such requirement. Which law would have been followed? For example, in the above case, could someone have gotten a divorce on the ground of abandonment of fewer than five years, given that this was ruled out by the Revised Statutes but not by the Civil Code?
The Louisiana Civil Code of 1870 (it was revised between 1868-1869, but enacted in 1870) applied specifically to civil cases (i.e. disputes between private parties); it's organized by topic area, and is there to keep people from having to comb through every law ever passed that has to do with civil cases. The Revised Statutes of 1870 gathered all the laws of "general character" into one place, for the same reason. The difference between the two was almost certainly an error. In general, there is one official version of the law; other versions are a convenience. The official version normally defaults to the individual laws passed by the legislature (which are organized by date, not by anything useful for finding relevant laws), but that can be changed by statute. In this case, the Revised Statutes contains section 3990, which says in so far as there may be any conflict between the provisions of this act and any provision of the said Revised Civil Code and Code of Practice, that said Code shall be held and taken as the law governing So, the Civil Code took precedence. Your revisions of 1876 and 1882 were not successor laws; rather, they were compilations of the Revised Statutes and Civil Code of 1870 with the amendments to those that had since been passed. The Revised Statutes from 1876 were really the Revised Statutes of 1870, modified by later laws (that didn't touch the divorce provisions). Likewise, the Civil Code from 1882 was really the Revised Civil Code of 1870, modified by later laws. The Civil Code of 1870 still took precedence over the Revised Statutes of 1870, so the divorce provisions of the Civil Code were authoritative.
That is the case in the state of Washington, for example. All property acquired during a marriage is considered community property. This can make things complicated since there are state-specific rules that can arise in case of a divorce (Enovsys LLC v. Nextel Communications, Inc: the couple declared no community property at the time of the divorce, meaning the wife who was not a party in in infringement case, had no standing – and therefore the infringement suit could procede). This page goes into details. There are 9 US states with community property regimes: it is also the law for Sweden, Germany, France and Italy. In the US, permission from one author is sufficient to constitute &quot;having permission&quot; w.r.t. copyright: an owner of the copyright can license the work, and you do not have to get permission from all owners. This does not invalidate an open source license: spouse 1 can grant such a license even if spouse 2 refuses to grant such a license. Rodrigue v. Rodrigue, 218 F.3d 432 partially answers the question in Louisiana specifically w.r.t. copyright. A lower court held that the state-specific quirk of giving a non-author an equal interest in copyrighted IP must be swept away in the interest of uniformity of federal law. The lower court indeed rejected an argument based on 17 USC 301 which declares federal law to be superior to legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to that set out in Title 17: but community property law is not equivalent to Title 17, it's much broader. The higher courts reasoning is a tall wall of words which boils down the their conclusion that &quot;we disagree with the district court only to the extent that it held the conflict between Louisiana community property law and federal copyright law irreconcilable absent congressional intercession&quot;, and having found a way that didn't involve Congress, they declared the work-creator to be the sole owner of the IP created during the marriage. See also the myriad citations contained therein. What this case in particular shows is that the specifics of the states community property laws will have an effect on how a courts would rule on such an IP question.
The law does have examples They are called “judgements” Every case decided by a court is an example, in common law jurisdictions at least. When those cases are decided by an superior court they become precedents - binding “examples” on courts in their hierarchy and persuasive “examples” on other courts. When you go to a lawyer for advice, she doesn’t just parrot back the statute, she looks at the precedents and decides whether the case decided by the House of Lords in 1848 or the High Court of Australia in 1912 more closely matches your situation. Also, statute law often has examples written into them Statues exist in hierarchies, Constitution, Acts, Regulations, Departmental Policies etc. and the lower you go the more specific the law is and the more likely it is to have examples. For example, this answer I wrote for another question quotes examples from the new-south-wales Evidence Act.
When an EU regulation or directive is replaced, the successor law will generally clarify that references to the old law should be interpreted as references to the successor law. That is also the case here. The old law is Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 The successor law is Regulation (EU) 2022/612 The successor law contains the following article: Article 23: Repeal Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 is repealed. References to the repealed Regulation shall be construed as references to this Regulation and shall be read in accordance with the correlation table in Annex II. That annex provides a mapping between articles in both laws. So, if your contract references Regulation 531/2012, you can interpret that as a reference to Regulation 2022/612. If your contract mentions specific articles of the old regulation, you can use Annex II to find the corresponding articles in the new regulation. This does not mean that the new regulation is necessarily applicable in your case. You mention that the dispute “is” from a time when the new law applied. However, the question is not when the dispute was raised, but when the alleged breaches occurred. If the matter were to be laid before a court, the court would apply the old law for breaches while the old law was in force, and the new law for those breaches while the new law was in force. This could lead to the same or distinct results. I haven't read the laws in question, so it could also be that these regulations apply to the formation of contracts and not conduct during those contracts, so that the old law might remain in effect until one contractual period is over (e.g. if you have a yearly contract that will renew on 2022-12-01, the old regulation might be applicable until then).
The Adoption Of No Fault Divorce In The U.S. Every U.S. state has no fault divorce, and in almost every state, this is available unilaterally even if one spouse doesn't want to end the marriage. California was the first U.S. state to adopt no fault divorce, which it did in 1970 under legislation adopted in 1969. New York State was the very last U.S. state to adopt &quot;no fault divorce&quot;, and it did so in October of 2010. But in Mississippi and Tennessee mutual consent is required for a no fault divorce to be granted (although, in Tennessee mutual consent is needed only in certain circumstances and a unilateral no fault divorce is effectively permitted after a two year waiting period), and in many states that have both no fault and fault based grounds for divorce, a fault based divorce can be granted more quickly than a unilateral no fault divorce. (Wikipedia incorrectly states that mutual consent is required for a no fault divorce in South Dakota, but lack of mutual consent merely delays entry of a divorce decree in South Dakota in a no fault divorce by thirty days.) Fault based divorces are not available in the States of Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Hawaii, Florida, Colorado and California. In other U.S. states and in the District of Columbia, both fault based and no fault based divorces are available, although no fault divorces are more common than fault based divorces in every U.S. state and in the District of Columbia. Economic Waste All or almost all U.S. states recognize the concept of &quot;economic waste&quot; of marital property. So, if, in anticipation of a divorce or during its pendency, a spouse, for example, destroys property that this spouse controls, or otherwise intentionally or recklessly disposes of it for far less than what it is worth, the loss of value to the marital estate from the act of &quot;economic waste&quot; is charged to the offending spouse. In some states, merely grossly negligent or negligent conduct can constitute economic waste as well, but that would be a minority rule. Conduct Relevant To The Best Interests Of The Child Parenting time and parental responsibilities are universally adjudicated under a &quot;best interests of the child&quot; standard. So, conduct that is specifically relevant to the parent-child relationship of the parties (e.g. driving drunk with the kids in the car, or not feeding the kids regularly), may be considered with respect to decisions on parenting time and parental responsibilities (a.k.a. custody and visitation determinations), on a case by case, fact intensive basis. But conduct of a parent that does not directly impact parent-child interactions of either spouse (e.g. an adulterous affair of a spouse of which the children have no knowledge), may not be considered for that purpose. Marital Misconduct Or Marital Fault Is Usually Not Considered For Child Support Due to federal welfare benefit legislation that sets requirements for child support laws to make states eligible for federal benefits, child support is determined by a formula (not exactly the same in every state but quite similar in practice) that doesn't consider marital misconduct or marital fault either. There are two main exceptions to this rule. First, in a rule similar to the economic waste rule, income can be imputed to a parent of a child for purposes of calculating child support if a parent intentionally earns less than the parent is capable of earning. Second, the guidelines do not apply beyond a threshold child support amount for high income parents, in which cases the child support award is discretionary and similar to an alimony award which may consider fault in some states where fault may be considered for alimony purposes in those cases. The exact dollar amount of the threshold varies from state to state and from year to year, but is typically a combined gross income of both parents on the order of $75,000 to $200,000 per year. Marital Fault or Marital Misconduct In Property Division and Alimony Awards States vary in the extent that marital fault may be considered for purposes of property division and for purposes of alimony awards. In states that consider fault for property division and alimony, usually both no fault divorce and fault based divorce options are available, and marital fault or martial misconduct may usually be considered for these purposes only in fault based divorce filings. Colorado and a majority of other U.S. states do not considering marital misconduct or marital fault (other than &quot;economic waste&quot; or conduct relevant to parenting) in either property division or alimony awards. Some states openly consider marital fault in property division and alimony awards. A handful of states (most notably North Carolina and Mississippi) have &quot;heart balm&quot; torts like &quot;alienation of affections&quot; that effectively allow someone to sue the &quot;other man&quot; or &quot;other woman&quot; who had an affair with their spouse for money damages. Mostly, but not entirely, martial fault or marital misconduct other than economic waste is a permissible consideration in &quot;red states&quot; in the Great Plains, Appalachia, and the South. Marital fault based tort awards are rare but allowed in theory in Illinois, Hawaii and New Mexico, but restrictions on proof of liability for theses torts make it exceedingly difficult to prevail in an alienation of affections case and recover substantial monetary damages. It is also possible to bring these tort suits with a lower standard of proof in Utah and South Dakota, which continue to have actively litigated alienation of affections suits, although the tort is not used as often in these states as it is in North Carolina and Mississippi. Some states that do not have heart balm torts, however, can still consider martial fault in property division and in alimony awards, at least in fault based divorce cases. California In California, the community property regime does not consider marital fault in property division. This is also true in all other states that have full fledged community property regimes: Arizona, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin California does not consider marital misconduct or marital fault in alimony awards either. New York State The legal culture in New York State to some extent probably does implicitly consider marital fault, since intuitions of legal practitioners and judges don't change as quickly as the law does, even though it should not consider this since consideration of marital fault in property division and alimony was abolished as a consideration in New York State in 2010. New York State's common law derived system of equitable property division is much more discretionary than that of California, which makes it easier for fault based intuitions of legal practitioners and judges to intrude on how cases are resolved sub silentio. But marital fault or marital misconduct (other than &quot;economic waste&quot; discussed above) is not among the factors that may be considered in New York State by statute. Old case law to the contrary has been superseded legislatively. Appellate Review oF Marital Fault Consideration Is Difficult To Perfect One reason that pre-no fault practice can have enduring influence on post-fault decision making by judges in New York (most of whom practiced law for most of their careers pre-2010 when property division and alimony awards in New York considered fault), is that there are few effective means of overturning on appeal a decision that covertly considers these factors. This is because, in practice, it is quite hard to review on appeal an improper consideration of marital fault in a New York State property division or alimony award. The court has broad discretion to equitably divide property and to make an alimony award, considering fact rich evidence that can reveal marital fault incidentally. And, in a fault based divorce (which still exists in New York along with no fault divorces), the evidence may have even been admitted properly and may have resulted in judicial findings of fact, for the other lawful purpose of determining valid grounds for a fault based divorce were present. Also, divorce decrees are entered by judges, and for appellate purposes, unless a judge expressly states in an oral or written ruling that an impermissible factor was considered, a judge is presumed to have ignored legally irrelevant evidence presented to the judge in a hearing or pleadings, even if evidence of marital fault is improperly admitted into evidence over the other party's objection, or is admitted into evidence without a preserved evidentiary objection. Also, often a judge will not make particularly detailed findings of fact or conduct details analysis of the court's reasoning in writing or orally, beyond a bare minimum of factual detail necessary to state what the find decision of the court was in the case and to make jurisdictionally required findings of fact. Judges are busy and they often due the bare minimum of work to resolve cases in ordinary divorces that come before them to decide. So, usually, the fact that marital fault evidence was presented at a permanent orders hearing in a divorce will not provide a basis for reversing a decision on appeal, even though it is plausible under the circumstances that the judge's decision on property division or alimony was influenced by marital fault.
You are deeply confused, probably by the blogs of a conspiracy theorist (perhaps discussing the Sovereign Citizen Movement mentioned in the comments), whom it would be helpful for you to reference. In fact, people with and without lawyers claim common law rights in the ordinary courts of the UK every day, in the lion's share of civil lawsuits. For example: There is a common law right to sue for damages when someone breaches a contract by not paying a bill that they owe. A defendant, meanwhile, has a common law right to defend against such a suit on grounds, for example, that the debt has been paid or that the debt is not owed because there was no agreement to pay in the first place. The substantive right of an owner of real property to evict a tenant who breaches a lease arises at common law, even though statutes spell out the process for enforcing that right. Furthermore, the way that ownership of real property is established (i.e. through a chain of title involving purchases by deeds) likewise arises at common law. The defendant meanwhile has a common law defense to a claim for rent for the remainder of the period in a lease after an eviction for failure of the landlord to mitigate damages if the landlord does not make a reasonable effort to find a new tenant. The right to sue someone who negligently caused an accident that injured you is a common law right.
The earliest mention of the principle that I can find is in Rolston v Secretary of State for Northern Ireland [1975] NI 195, where the matter of compensation for the widow of a police officer murdered in Northern Ireland arose. I am sure there are earlier cases that express the same principle in different terms, however. It is a broad principle that applies to most areas of civil law, and I cannot find an original source for it. I imagine that it is simply &quot;received wisdom&quot; that has been repeated long enough to become a cornerstone of the law of restitution in England and Wales. There is currently no statutory basis for the principle so I cannot cite any relevant Acts of Parliament either.
The general rule is that the ability to have a valid divorce has nothing to do with where the marriage was entered into, or the citizenship of the parties. Usually, any jurisdiction with sufficient contacts with either member of the couple has jurisdiction to enter a divorce. Hence, generally, people get divorced in the place that they live. The problem in this scenario is step 5. I think that it is highly likely that the U.S. Embassy is simply wrong, unless there is some serious irregularity in step 4. An annulment after four years of marriage, as opposed to a divorce, is highly irregular and would not be allowed in the vast majority of jurisdictions. But, maybe there are facts and circumstances that make it otherwise. This fact pattern, while it on one hand sounds like a "for a friend" question based on real facts, also sounds like some important details that may be outcome determinative have been omitted.