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Marriage Law Information
What Is Marriage?
Marriage is a relationship and bond between individuals that
plays a key role in the definition of many families.
In modern times, the term marriage is generally reserved for a state sanctioned
union. The phrase legally married can be used to emphasize this point. In the
United States there are two methods of receiving state sanction of a marriage:
common law marriage and obtaining a marriage license. The vast majority of US
states to do permit common law marriage. Many localities do support various
types of domestic partnerships.
In the West marriage has evolved from a life-time covenant that can only be
broken by fault or death to an contract that be broken by either party at will.
Other shifts in Western marriage since WWI include: (a) Unlike the 1800s women
not men get child custody over 80% of the time, (b) both spouses have a formal
duty of spousal support (no longer just the husband), (c) Women can vote (i.e.,
coveture no longer applies),(d) Out-of-Wedlock children have the same rights of
support as legitimate children, (e) in most states rape can legally occur within
marriage and be punished, (f) husbands may no longer physically discipline/abuse
their wife, and (g) property acquired since marriage is not owned by the
Title-holder. This property is considered marital and to be divided among the
spouses by community property law or equitable distribution via the courts.
There is a growing debate about the form(s) that marriage should take. Two of
the most hotly-debated variants are same-sex marriage and polygamy.
Typically, marriage is the institution through which people join together their
lives in emotional and economic ways through forming a household. It often
confers rights and obligations with respect to raising children, holding
property, sexual behavior, kinship ties, tribal membership, relationship to
society, inheritance, emotional intimacy, and love.
Marriage sometimes: establishes the legal father of a woman's child; establishes
the legal mother of a man's child; gives the husband or his family control over
the wife's sexual services, labor, and/or property; gives the wife or her family
control over the husband's sexual services, labor, and/or property; establishes
a joint fund of property for the benefit of children; establishes a relationship
between the families of the husband and wife. No society does all of these; no
one of these is universal.
Marriage has traditionally been a prerequisite for starting a family, which
usually serves as the building block of a community and society. Thus, marriage
not only serves the interests of the two individuals, but also the interests of
their children and the society of which they are a part.
More on Marriage:
For more free legal information on Family Laws, please use the
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