We are talking about Bob Marley's estate. His widow and nine of his children have recently filed a lawsuit against the singer's half-brother to stop him from using the Marley name or reputation in a handful of business ventures in Florida and Jamaica. Sadly, this is just the most recent court battle Marley's heirs have entered into. In the 30 years since his death, Marley's family has fought to maintain control of all things Marley.

In our last post, we mentioned that the family owns the rights to parts of Marley's legacy by common law. It's easy to pass over that term, "common law," when reading through the complaint. But after a while, it comes back and begins to nag a bit. Why common law?

In the law -- or The Law, as a friend insists on writing -- there are a few meanings of the term. Generally, if you hear a group of lawyers talking about common law, they are talking about legal rules that come from judicial decisions rather than statutes. Yes, this is the "judge-made law" that comes up in political debates.

Then there is the common law in common-law marriage, which, by the way, was abolished in Florida in the late 1960s. Common-law marriage is more than just living together and holding yourself out to be married. The partners must be capable of being married, too. They cannot be married to other people, they cannot be brother and sister -- essentially, they meet all the legal criteria needed to get married but never get a license or go through a ceremony.

A marriage recognized as common-law, though, binds the parties as if they'd been married by the Pope himself. Their children are legitimate. They can break up, but they'll need a divorce or an annulment if they want to marry other people.

There is also something called a common-law copyright, and we'll discuss that in our next post.

Source: Forbes.com, "Are Bob Marley's Heirs Destroying His Legacy?," Danielle and Andy Mayoras, Dec. 5, 2011