Definition
Marriage carries two distinct legal meanings that courts and statutes invoke for different purposes.
1. Status. Marriage is the civil status created when two persons are lawfully united as spouses. It is a legal relationship of the highest personal significance — not merely a contract between two individuals, but a relation that the state recognizes, regulates, and can only dissolve by its own authority. The status carries a bundle of rights and obligations: inheritance, spousal privilege, support duties, presumption of legitimacy of children, tax treatment, and much more.
2. Ceremony or act. Marriage also refers to the formal proceeding — the act of becoming married. This meaning focuses on the event rather than the ongoing status, and it governs questions about whether a valid marriage was contracted in the first place: whether the ceremony satisfied legal requirements, whether the parties had capacity, and whether any impediment voided the union.
A third, archaic legal meaning appears in older English sources: marriage as feudal right — specifically, the lord's or guardian's right in chivalry to dispose of a ward in marriage (see maritagium). This sense is obsolete in modern law but appears with some frequency in historical land tenure materials.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): [The submitted Wiktionary entry is unhelpful — it returns a surname definition.] In ordinary contemporary English, marriage means the union of two persons as spouses, formalized through ceremony or legal registration, creating a recognized domestic partnership.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of marrying, or the state of being married; legal union of a man and a woman for life, as husband and wife; wedlock; matrimony."
The gap between common and legal meaning is not definitional so much as structural. In common usage, marriage is experienced as a relationship — social, romantic, familial. In law, marriage is simultaneously a contract and a status, and the distinction between those two characterizations has enormous doctrinal consequences. As a contract, it requires capacity and consent and is subject to formation rules; as a status, it cannot be ended simply by mutual agreement the way a contract can, but only by state-sanctioned dissolution (divorce or annulment). The everyday understanding collapses this distinction in ways that regularly mislead lay readers of legal texts.
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Common Confusion
Marriage vs. Civil Union vs. Domestic Partnership. These terms have been used interchangeably in colloquial speech but carry distinct legal weights, particularly for purposes of federal law recognition, interstate portability, and spousal benefits. Following Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage in all U.S. states, which largely mooted civil union and domestic partnership regimes for new couples — but existing registered partnerships in some states were not automatically converted to marriages. Researchers using sources from 1990–2015 must be alert to which legal vehicle is being discussed.
Marriage vs. Morganatic Marriage. Historical sources, particularly those drawing on English and Continental law, discuss morganatic marriage as a species of lawful but status-limited union between a person of noble rank and a person of inferior station. The children and wife of such a union did not inherit the husband's rank or property under noble succession rules. This concept has no operative role in American law but appears in older treatises and in some international private law contexts.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Common-Law Marriage. A marriage formed without a formal ceremony, based on mutual agreement to be married, cohabitation, and public holding-out as spouses. Recognized in a minority of U.S. jurisdictions; generally not recognized in England after the Marriage Act 1753.
Ceremonial Marriage. The standard form in most jurisdictions: a license is obtained, a ceremony is performed before an authorized officiant and witnesses, and the marriage is registered.
Proxy Marriage. A marriage in which one or both parties participate through an authorized representative rather than in person. Recognized in a small number of states and in some foreign jurisdictions; recognition of foreign proxy marriages in other states is unsettled. See family_12.
Covenant Marriage. A legislatively created variant, available in a handful of states (notably Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas), that imposes stricter requirements for both entry and dissolution. See family_11.
Putative Marriage. A marriage that is legally void or voidable but that one or both parties entered in good faith believing it to be valid. Many states extend some marital rights and protections to putative spouses.
Morganatic Marriage. A historically recognized form in which the spouse of inferior rank and their issue accepted limited rights by express contract. Obsolete in U.S. law.
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Why It Matters in Research
The contract/status duality is the central analytical fault line. Sources prior to the mid-twentieth century often frame marriage predominantly as a contract, with courts analyzing capacity, consent, and formation accordingly. Modern doctrine — and modern statutory schemes — increasingly emphasize marriage as a status relationship, particularly after constitutional decisions that grounded marriage rights in due process and equal protection. A researcher reading an older source that calls marriage "merely a contract" is not reading bad law for its time, but must not import that framing directly into modern analysis.
The definitional history of marriage has been transformed by constitutional litigation. Pre-2003 sources will define marriage exclusively as a union of a man and a woman — not because the dictionaries were making a political statement but because that was settled law. Post-Obergefell, all U.S. jurisdictions must license and recognize same-sex marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act (2022) provides additional federal statutory protection. Researchers using any source predating 2015 must apply this shift consciously, especially when working with statutory definitions that have not been updated.
Interstate and international recognition is a live research trap. Whether a marriage valid where celebrated will be recognized in another state (the lex loci celebrationis rule and its exceptions) has been contested for over a century. The traditional rule favors recognition, but states historically carved out public policy exceptions, including for same-sex marriages prior to Obergefell. For foreign marriages, conflicts-of-law analysis remains essential. See family_10.
The feudal sense of marriage (maritagium) surfaces in historical land tenure records and in English case reports through the nineteenth century. Researchers working in colonial land records, English equity reports, or early American real property cases may encounter this usage and should not conflate it with the domestic relations meaning.
The writ of marriage — a remedy formerly available to a wife after divorce for recovery of goods brought into the marriage — appears briefly in Black's and Bouvier's. It is extinct in modern law but may appear in pre-twentieth century equity pleadings.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition with surprising consistency, with the most complete formulation appearing in the first edition of Black's: marriage is "the civil status of one man and one woman united in law for life, for the discharge to each other and the community of the duties legally incumbent on those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex" (citing Bishop on Marriage and Divorce). This formulation is explicitly borrowed from Bishop, not generated by the dictionary editors independently — a reminder that Black's early editions are often synthesizing treatise authority rather than reporting settled doctrine.
Rapalje & Lawrence contribute a significant nuance that the other dictionaries underemphasize: marriage is "not only a contract, but also a personal relation of a very special kind... somewhat resembling a natural relationship" (citing Hyde v. Hyde and Sottomayer v. De Barros, English Probate Division cases). This framing — that marriage is something more than, or other than, a mere contract — is actually more predictive of where American constitutional doctrine eventually landed than the contract-dominant framing in Black's.
Bouvier's entry on the writ of marriage (for recovery of goods given in marriage after divorce) and Black's parallel entry are nearly identical, both citing Mozley & Whitley. Neither source develops this remedy beyond the single sentence, and it appears to have been effectively dead even at the time of publication.
None of the historical sources grapples with same-sex marriage, common-law marriage's contested interstate status, or the constitutional dimensions of the right to marry — all of which are now primary research questions. Their silence on these points is not a deficiency for their time but is a significant limitation for modern researchers who treat these dictionaries as current authority.
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Jurisdictional Note
Marriage law in the United States is primarily state law, with federal constitutional floors established by cases including Loving v. Virginia (1967) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). States retain authority over licensing requirements, age of consent, prohibited degrees of relationship, common-law marriage recognition, and dissolution procedures, producing meaningful variation. Common-law marriage is recognized in a minority of states; covenant marriage is available in only three. International marriages are governed by a combination of the law of the place of celebration, conflicts-of-law doctrine, and (where applicable) treaty obligations.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Family Law Encyclopedia — Proxy Marriage and Marriage by Estoppel (family_12)
Family Law Encyclopedia — Recognition of Foreign and Interstate Marriages (family_10)
Family Law Encyclopedia — Covenant Marriage: State Variations (family_11)
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