Definition
An adjective describing something that pertains to, arises from, or is incident to the legal relationship of marriage. In modern usage, "marital" modifies a wide range of legal concepts — rights, property, duties, privilege, coercion, domicile, presumption — each of which carries its own doctrine. The word itself is a term of relation, not a standalone doctrine, and its legal significance is always determined by the noun it modifies.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Pertaining to marriage; pertaining to a husband.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Of or pertaining to a husband; as, marital rights, duties, authority.
The gap between common and legal usage here is not one of definition but of scope. Both common and legal sources understand "marital" to mean relating to marriage or to a husband. The legal significance lies in the specific compound terms "marital" modifies — marital property, marital privilege, marital presumption — each of which carries technical doctrine that the ordinary adjective does not signal. A reader encountering "marital" in a legal document should immediately ask which legal regime the modified noun invokes, rather than relying on the plain adjective alone.
Why It Matters in Research
The most important thing to know when researching "marital" in historical sources is the husband-centric drift of the term's older usage. Pre-twentieth-century dictionaries, statutes, and cases frequently used "marital rights" and "marital duties" to mean the rights and duties of the husband specifically — not of the marriage relationship as a shared institution. A researcher reading an 1880 case about "marital rights" being violated is almost certainly reading about a husband's rights, not spousal rights generally. Modern sources use "marital" symmetrically; historical sources often do not.
Three specific research traps follow from this:
First, "marital property" is a modern doctrinal term — primarily the language of equitable distribution and community property systems — but historical sources use "marital rights" to describe what was essentially a husband's property interest in his wife's estate and person. The two concepts are not interchangeable. Conflating them when working across time periods will produce errors.
Second, the marital coercion doctrine (a husband's coercion of his wife as a defense to her criminal liability) appears in older editions of Black's and in common law cases. This doctrine is largely abolished or severely curtailed in modern American law. Researchers encountering "marital coercion" in historical materials should not assume it reflects current law anywhere in the United States.
Third, the "marital presumption" — that a child born during a valid marriage is presumed to be the husband's legitimate child — is a doctrine with ancient roots that remains live in modern law but has been substantially modified by constitutional developments, DNA evidence standards, and statutory reform. Historical dictionary definitions of "marital" do not capture this dimension at all; researchers need to move from the dictionary to the case law quickly.
The Louisiana "marital portion" (a widow's share of her deceased husband's estate) is a civil-law survival with no common-law counterpart. It appears in Black's 2nd edition with a Louisiana Civil Code citation. Researchers working in Louisiana succession law should treat this as a distinct term of art with its own civilian lineage.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries agree on the core meaning: "marital" relates to marriage and, more specifically, to a husband. Black's 1st edition is the sparest — "relating to the status of marriage; pertaining to a husband; incident to a husband" — and that phrasing itself reveals the conflation of marriage and husbandhood that characterized the common law understanding. Anderson's and Bouvier's follow the same pattern, treating "marital rights" and "marital duties" as belonging primarily to the husband.
Black's 2nd edition adds the most substance, with sub-entries for marital coercion and the Louisiana marital portion. The marital coercion entry is historically significant: it reflects the common law presumption that a wife who committed a crime in her husband's presence did so under his coercion, a rule grounded in coverture doctrine. That the entry appears without qualification or criticism reflects the era. Modern researchers should treat it as a historical artifact.
What the historical dictionaries do not cover is notable: marital privilege (the evidentiary rules protecting spousal communications and testimony), marital waste, marital misconduct in divorce proceedings, and the constitutional dimensions of marital status as a protected liberty interest. These omissions are not oversights by the dictionary authors — the doctrines either did not exist in their current form or had not yet been recognized as distinct categories. The silence is informative.
Jurisdictional Note
The reach of "marital" as a modifier varies significantly by jurisdiction, particularly for marital property. Community property states (including California, Texas, and Louisiana) apply different default rules about what property becomes "marital" during marriage than equitable distribution states. Louisiana's civilian marital portion doctrine has no counterpart in common law states. For the marital presumption of paternity, statutory reform has varied substantially across states in response to constitutional rulings.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Marital Property — Classification (Marital vs. Separate Property) (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)
Marital Property — Tracing Separate Property Through Marital Assets (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)
Paternity — Rebutting the Marital Presumption (The Law Mind Family Law Encyclopedia)