Definition
In law, *connections* refers to persons related to another by blood or marriage. Historically, the term carried a specific emphasis: it most commonly denoted the relatives *by marriage* of a given person — that is, the relations a person acquires through a spouse rather than through birth. Under this usage, the relatives of a wife are the "connections" of her husband, and vice versa.
The term is broadly acknowledged, including by its own historical sources, to be vague and indefinite. It does not carry a precise legal boundary the way "kin," "heir," or "next of kin" do, and its meaning in any given document or instrument depends heavily on context.
In modern legal usage, *connections* rarely appears as a standalone term of art. Where it does appear — particularly in wills, trust instruments, family settlements, and older statutory language — it typically means something like "relatives by affinity" (marriage) as distinguished from relatives by consanguinity (blood), though the two categories sometimes overlap depending on drafting intent.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of *connection* — relationships, links, or associations between people or things.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Persons connected by ties of blood or marriage; kindred; relatives.
The gap between common and legal meaning is narrow but worth noting. In ordinary English, "connections" is broadly relational — professional networks, social ties, causal links. In legal usage, especially in older instruments and family law documents, *connections* is specifically a *relational status term* tied to kinship and affinity. A researcher encountering the word in a will or deed should not read it in the broad modern sense; the legal term is almost always limited to persons connected by blood or marriage, with the weight typically falling on the marriage side.
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Why It Matters in Research
The research risk with *connections* is misreading it as a general or functional term when it appears in historical legal instruments. In wills, marriage settlements, and trust documents from the 18th and 19th centuries, "connections" is a term of quasi-technical family law usage identifying who has a claim, a right of notice, or a beneficial interest. Treating it as loose social language will cause a researcher to underestimate its legal significance in context.
The vagueness flagged by both editions of Black's is itself significant: courts sometimes had to construe what a testator or drafter meant by "connections," particularly where instruments distinguished between "family," "relations," "kindred," and "connections." These are not interchangeable. *Connections* tends to tilt toward affinal (marriage-based) relationships; *kindred* and *relations* tilt toward consanguineal (blood) relationships. Where the terms appear together in a single document, courts typically held each to mean something distinct.
In Pennsylvania practice specifically — both editions of Black's cite Pennsylvania authority — the term generated enough litigation to produce reported decisions on its scope. Researchers working in Pennsylvania probate and property records from the 19th century should be alert to this.
Modern legal writing avoids *connections* as a term of art almost entirely, preferring "relatives," "family members," "heirs," "issue," or specific statutory categories. Encounters with the standalone term in contemporary materials are almost always either informal or a carryover from older drafting conventions.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's (1st and 2nd) give identical substantive definitions, differing only in citation form: the first edition cites "1 Pa. St. 507" and the second properly identifies this as *Storer v. Wheatley*, 1 Pa. 507. Both editions flag the term explicitly as "vague and indefinite" — an unusual editorial admission for a legal dictionary, and an instructive one. The inclusion of the term in Black's at all reflects its currency in 19th-century legal instruments; its brevity in both editions reflects the limits of its formal legal definition.
Neither edition attempts to resolve the tension between blood relations and marriage relations, or to enumerate what degree of relationship qualifies. Both editions simply note the emphasis on the marriage-based meaning without making it exclusive. This leaves open — as courts sometimes found — whether a drafter's use of "connections" was intended to include blood relatives, affinal relatives, or both.
No significant evolution between editions is detectable; the second edition merely cleaned up the citation. The term did not develop further as a discrete legal concept in the editions that followed, reflecting its gradual displacement by more precise terminology.
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Jurisdictional Note
Pennsylvania is the only jurisdiction specifically cited in the historical dictionary authority for this term, and the reported case law there shaped how courts treated "connections" in probate and conveyancing contexts. The term's legal significance in other jurisdictions depended almost entirely on how individual drafters used it in specific instruments; no uniform rule emerged across states.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
For a distinct modern legal use of "connection" as a term of art — specifically *service connection* in veterans law — see:
- Service Connection — Direct, Secondary, and Presumptive Service Connection (The Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty Law Encyclopedia, military_19)
- VA Disability Compensation — Service Connection, Disability Ratings, and the Combined Rating System (The Law Mind Military, Veterans & Admiralty Law Encyclopedia, military_18)
Note: "Service connection" in veterans law is a wholly separate legal concept from the family-law term *connections* defined here. The overlap is terminological only.
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