Definition
An action of adherence is a remedy in Scots law by which a spouse compelled the other to return to cohabitation following desertion. Either husband or wife could bring the action. The court would order the deserting spouse to adhere — that is, to resume the marital relationship — and failure to comply could carry legal consequences, including effects on the deserting party's claims arising from the marriage.
The action is the Scottish counterpart to the English suit for restitution of conjugal rights, a remedy that existed in the ecclesiastical and later the civil courts of England. Both remedies shared the same underlying logic: marriage imposed a legal duty of cohabitation, and the law would enforce that duty on petition of the aggrieved spouse.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical Scottish legal materials and in comparative treatments of matrimonial law. Researchers encounter it most often in nineteenth-century digests, Scottish institutional writers, and cross-border discussions of marriage obligations.
Several research traps are worth flagging. First, the action is functionally obsolete. Both Scotland and England abolished compulsory restitution of conjugal rights as a live remedy over the course of the twentieth century — Scotland by statute, England by the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act 1970. Sources written before abolition treat the action as current law; sources written after treat it as a historical curiosity. The period of the source determines which register you are reading in.
Second, the action of adherence should not be mistaken for a divorce action. It was a remedy to preserve the marriage, not dissolve it. In Scots law, the failure to comply with an adherence decree historically fed into fault-based divorce proceedings, but the adherence action itself was distinct from any action for divorce or separation. Researchers tracing a matrimonial dispute through Scottish records may find an adherence action at an earlier stage of the same dispute that later produced a divorce.
Third, the action has no direct equivalent in most American jurisdictions. American courts generally declined to adopt either the Scottish or English forms of compelled cohabitation, making this a term that surfaces in American legal dictionaries primarily for comparative or definitional purposes rather than as a working remedy.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary gives a compressed but accurate entry, identifying the action as Scots law, noting its availability to either spouse, and drawing the explicit analogy to the English restitution of conjugal rights suit, citing Wharton. The Wharton reference is to Wharton's Law Lexicon, a standard nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal dictionary that treated Scots law with more depth than many American competitors.
The entry is serviceable but thin. Black's does not address the procedural mechanics of the action, its relationship to divorce proceedings, or the consequences of non-compliance. Institutional Scots law sources — particularly the writings of Erskine and Bell — provide substantially richer treatment. Those sources make clear that the action was a genuine coercive remedy and not merely declaratory; the court's decree carried enforceable obligations.
What the historical dictionaries universally omit is the trajectory of the action's abolition. Because the major English and American legal dictionaries were consolidated before the mid-twentieth century reforms, they present the action as a live feature of the law without signaling its later disappearance. Researchers should treat any historical dictionary treatment as a snapshot, not a current account.
Jurisdictional Note
The action of adherence is specific to Scots law and has no direct American equivalent. The analogous English remedy — restitution of conjugal rights — was abolished in England and Wales by statute in 1970. Scotland similarly abolished the compulsory aspect of the action. Neither remedy survives as an enforceable remedy in any major common law jurisdiction today.