[lisarea]

Common law marriage is only recognized by something like ten or a dozen US states, and each of those states recognizes it differently.

I suspect that, most of the time when people say people are common law married, it just means that they live together and are committed, but never made it legal.

I suspect people probably use that term instead of 'partner' because a partner could be something like a business partner. Or because it sounds kind of gay.