a friend told me that my boyfriend and I can file our taxes as married filing joint. I did not work and my 3 kids and I lived with him all year. Neither one of us is married. Can we file jointly? I can not find this info anywhere with IRS or any of their publications. We live in Texas and I could not find out anything about common law marriage. We have been together almost 3 years. Thx for any help.

While I can't really speak to the tax situation yet, I can tell you that common law marriages are as good as the paper they are written on. I strongly suspect that he has to file as a single man with only himself as a deduction. Neither you or your children are related to him, and probably don't qualify as dependents with regard to his taxes.
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Later Edit -
See the last post here.

Read this entire thread.