FORFEITURE OF MARRIAGE

3 definitions found across Law Mind sources

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FORFEITURE OF MARRIAGEAuthored
The Law Mind • 1245 words
Definition
Forfeiture of marriage was a feudal incident of tenure by which a ward in chivalry who married without the lord's consent became liable to pay the lord a sum of money, or, in some formulations, forfeited to the lord the value of the marriage — that is, the financial benefit the lord would have received had he arranged or approved the marriage. It was one of several profitable incidents attached to wardship under the feudal system of knight service in medieval English land law. When a tenant who held land by knight service died leaving an infant heir, the lord acquired wardship over both the heir's person and the heir's land until the heir reached majority. Bundled within that wardship was the lord's right to arrange the heir's marriage — not merely as a social privilege but as a property right with direct economic value. Lords could sell this right to others, and the anticipated marriage could be priced and transferred like any other asset. If the ward married without the lord's consent, the ward committed a forfeiture of marriage and owed the lord the full value of the marriage. If the lord had already offered the ward a suitable match and the ward refused, the ward owed double the value of that offered marriage — a penalty known in the sources as the forfeiture for refusing the lord's match. The doctrine applied to female as well as male wards. The lord's interest was purely pecuniary: the right existed because a ward's marriage could affect the political and economic alliances attached to the land, and the lord had a recognized interest in controlling or profiting from those alliances. ---
Common Confusion
FORFEITURE OF MARRIAGE should not be confused with WASTE OF MARRIAGE, though the two concepts are related and arise in the same feudal context. Waste of marriage, sometimes called disparagement, referred specifically to the lord's act of offering the ward an unsuitable or socially inferior match — a practice that English law came to prohibit. Magna Carta addressed disparagement directly. Forfeiture of marriage, by contrast, ran in the opposite direction: it was the ward's liability to the lord for marrying without permission, not the lord's liability for offering an unworthy match. The two terms are sometimes loosely grouped in historical sources under the general subject of wardship and marriage, which can cause researchers to conflate the ward's obligation with the lord's restriction. ---
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to historical legal research. It has no living application in modern American or English law; the Statute of Tenures (1660) abolished the feudal incidents of wardship, including the right of marriage and its associated forfeiture, in England. No American jurisdiction inherited this doctrine as operative law. Researchers will encounter the term primarily in four contexts: First, in treatises on English feudal tenure — Littleton's Tenures, Coke upon Littleton, and Blackstone's Commentaries are the canonical sources. Blackstone treats the right of marriage and its forfeiture in Book II under the incidents of tenure by knight service. Second, in early English case law and Year Books addressing the calculation of the value of a marriage and what constituted a forfeiture. Third, in historiographical work on Magna Carta. Chapter 6 of Magna Carta (1215) addressed wardship and marriage directly, and the forfeiture doctrine sits in that constitutional-historical conversation. Fourth, in comparative legal history, where scholars examine how feudal tenure incidents shaped the early development of property law, family law, and the legal status of women and minors. A research trap: the word "forfeiture" appears frequently in modern legal sources in entirely unrelated contexts (criminal forfeiture, forfeiture of bail, forfeiture of corporate charter). When searching a mixed corpus that includes both historical and modern materials, hits on "forfeiture" plus "marriage" may pull modern sources discussing, for example, the forfeiture of marital property rights upon divorce or conviction — concepts that share no doctrinal lineage with this term. Filter carefully by era. A second trap: Rapalje & Lawrence, like other nineteenth-century Anglo-American legal dictionaries, sometimes treats feudal doctrines as though they retain some residual relevance in American equity or trust contexts. They do not for this term. Treat entries on feudal incidents in these dictionaries as historical glosses, not statements of then-current American law. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define forfeiture of marriage in terms consistent with the feudal framework described above, identifying it as the penalty owed by a ward who married without the lord's consent. The definition reflects the standard Blackstonian account and adds little that is not already in the treatise literature. The primary gap in the historical dictionary sources is doctrinal depth. Dictionary entries on this term tend to state the bare rule without addressing the mechanics of valuation — how courts calculated the "value of the marriage," how the double-value penalty for refusal was assessed, or how the doctrine applied differently to male and female wards over time. For that level of analysis, researchers must go to Coke upon Littleton and to the secondary literature on feudal tenure rather than relying on dictionary treatments. No significant divergence between historical dictionary sources appears on this term; the concept was well-settled before these dictionaries were written, and its abolition was equally settled. The entry presents no contested definitions. ---
Jurisdictional Note
Forfeiture of marriage was exclusively a doctrine of English feudal tenure and has no counterpart in American law. Scotland, which developed a distinct feudal system, had analogous but not identical wardship incidents. Researchers working in Scottish legal history should consult sources specific to Scots law rather than extrapolating from English sources. ---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia — Marriage series does not contain a dedicated entry on feudal incidents of marriage. The closest contextual entries for researchers situating this term within broader marriage law history are: - Family Law Encyclopedia, Entry 10: Marriage — Recognition of Foreign and Interstate Marriages (for background on how marriage has historically been regulated as a legal status) - Family Law Encyclopedia, Entry 11: Marriage — Covenant Marriage (State Variations) (for the modern regulatory contrast with historical lord-controlled marriage arrangements) - Family Law Encyclopedia, Entry 12: Marriage — Proxy Marriage and Marriage by Estoppel (for related questions about consent and formality in marriage law) None of these entries address feudal incidents directly; they provide modern doctrinal context rather than historical lineage. ---
Related Terms
WARDSHIP — the feudal relationship giving rise to the lord's right of marriage; the parent doctrine. MARRIAGERIGHT OF — the lord's affirmative right to arrange or sell the ward's marriage; the flip side of the forfeiture obligation. DISPARAGEMENT — the lord's prohibited act of offering the ward an inferior match; see also WASTE OF MARRIAGE. KNIGHT SERVICE — the tenure by which forfeiture of marriage arose. INCIDENTS OF TENURE — the broader category of feudal obligations (including homagefealtyreliefwardshipand marriage) of which this was one. STATUTE OF TENURES (1660) — the English legislation abolishing the incidents of tenure in chivalryincluding the right and forfeiture of marriage. MAGNA CARTA — foundational document addressing the lord's rights in wardship and marriage. INFANCY — the ward's minority status was the trigger for the lord's wardship and thus for the marriage right.
FORFEITURE OF MARRIAGEmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
A penalty incurred by a ward in chivalry who married without the consent or against the will of the guardian. See DUPLEX VALOR
FORFEITURE OF MARRIAGEmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
A penalty incurred by a ward in chivalry when he or she married contrary to the wishes of his or her guardian in chivalry. The latter, who was the ward's lord, had an interest in controlling the marriage of his female wards, and he could exact a price for his consent; and at length it be- came customary to sell the marriage of wards of both sexes; 2 Bla. Com. 70. When a male ward refused an equal match provided by his guardian, he was obliged, on coming of age, to pay him the value of the marriage, that is, as much as he had been bona fide offered for it, or, if the guardian chose, as much as a jury would assess, taking into consideration all the real and personal property of the ward; and the guardian could claim this value al- though he might have made no tender of the marriage; Co. Litt. 82 a; Co. 2d Inst. 92; 5 Co. 126 b; 6 id. 70 b. When a male ward between the age of fourteen and twenty-one refused to accept an offer of an equal match (one without disparagement), and during that period forined an alliance elsewhere without his guardian's permission, he incurred forfeit- ure of marriage, that is, he became liable to pay double the value of the marriage. Co. Litt. 78 b, 82 b.

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