Definition
Matrimonial causes are legal actions arising from marriage and the rights, duties, and status that flow from it. The term is primarily historical and derives from English ecclesiastical law, where such causes formed one of three major divisions of jurisdiction exercised by the ecclesiastical courts. In that context, matrimonial causes encompassed any suit touching the legal rights and obligations of marriage, including its validity, continuation, dissolution, and the remedies available when those rights were violated.
The category historically included:
1. Divorce — both divorce a vinculo matrimonii (dissolution of the marriage bond) and divorce a mensa et thoro (judicial separation, literally "from bed and board"), with different grounds and effects.
2. Nullity of marriage — suits to declare that no valid marriage ever existed, on grounds such as fraud, incest, consanguinity, or other legal bar.
3. Restitution of conjugal rights — a suit compelling an estranged spouse to return to cohabitation.
4. Jactitation of marriage — an action against a person falsely claiming to be married to the plaintiff, causing reputational or legal harm.
5. Alimony — suits for financial support incident to separation or divorce.
6. Damages for adultery — recognized in some formulations as a civil matrimonial remedy.
Following the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 in England, jurisdiction over these matters transferred from the ecclesiastical courts to newly created civil courts, and the term migrated into statutory and civil procedural usage. In modern English law, matrimonial causes retains a formal statutory meaning, referring to proceedings in the Family Division of the High Court concerning divorce, nullity, and judicial separation. The term is rarely used in American law, which developed its own jurisdictional framework through state equity and statutory courts from the colonial period onward.
Common Confusion
Matrimonial causes is sometimes loosely equated with divorce law, but the term is broader. Divorce is one species within the category; nullity, restitution of conjugal rights, and jactitation of marriage are distinct causes of action with different pleading requirements, parties, and remedies. Researchers encountering the phrase in historical sources should resist collapsing it to mean divorce alone. Conversely, modern practitioners familiar with the term from English statutory sources should not assume pre-1857 ecclesiastical usage carries the same procedural implications.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The principal forms recognized across the historical dictionary sources are:
— Divorce a vinculo matrimonii: Full dissolution of the marriage bond; historically available only on narrow grounds and, in England before 1857, required a private Act of Parliament after ecclesiastical divorce a mensa et thoro.
— Divorce a mensa et thoro: Judicial separation without dissolution; the parties remained legally married but were relieved of cohabitation obligations. This is the precursor to modern judicial separation.
— Nullity of marriage: Suit to declare the marriage void or voidable ab initio.
— Restitution of conjugal rights: Affirmative suit compelling return to the matrimonial home; abolished in England in 1970, never widely adopted in American practice.
— Jactitation of marriage: Suit to silence false claims of marriage; an obscure remedy that largely fell into disuse.
— Alimony: Financial support claims, either pendente lite or permanent, ancillary to separation or dissolution proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a jurisdictional marker as much as a substantive category. When you encounter it in English legal sources before 1858, you are in ecclesiastical court territory — the Court of Arches, the Consistory Courts, the Prerogative Courts. After 1858, you are in the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Court and eventually the Family Division. The procedural rules, the available remedies, the evidentiary standards, and the form of the pleadings changed substantially at that boundary. Do not apply post-1857 civil procedure principles to pre-1857 ecclesiastical causes.
For American researchers, the term is largely a historical import. American states never vested matrimonial jurisdiction in ecclesiastical courts — there were none — so divorce and related causes were handled by equity courts, chancery courts, or specialized statutory courts depending on the jurisdiction and era. American sources using "matrimonial causes" are typically borrowing English terminology for analytical or comparative purposes, or are working from English precedents to fill gaps in early American law.
The component causes within this category evolved unevenly. Restitution of conjugal rights survived in English law as a formal remedy far longer than most researchers expect (abolished 1970). Jactitation of marriage persisted in rare procedural corners well into the twentieth century. Alimony, by contrast, developed robust and divergent bodies of doctrine in American jurisdictions almost entirely independently of English ecclesiastical precedent. When tracing any specific subspecies of matrimonial cause, treat each as having its own jurisdictional and temporal track.
Researchers should also note that the category itself reflects a now-obsolete merger of what we would today separate into status law (marriage and its dissolution), tort law (criminal conversation, jactitation), and support law (alimony). Modern sources will not group these together. Historical sources almost always do.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are substantially in agreement on the core content of this term, all tracing the category to English ecclesiastical jurisdiction and citing Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 92–94) and Stephen's Commentaries (3 Steph. Comm. 712–714) as the foundational authorities. Burrill's closely tracks Black's in language, suggesting common sourcing.
Bouvier provides the most granular treatment, enumerating five distinct subcategories and citing Haggard's Consistory Reports for the nullity subspecies, which is the most detailed engagement with primary authority among the four. Rapalje & Lawrence adds damages for adultery as a recognized cause — a useful supplement not made explicit in the others — and cross-references the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, flagging the post-1857 jurisdictional reorganization in English law.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the American picture. None of the four source entries acknowledges that "matrimonial causes" in American practice was a borrowed term applied to equity or statutory court proceedings that had no direct ecclesiastical lineage. For American jurisdictional history, researchers will need to look beyond these dictionary entries to treatises on equity jurisdiction and state-specific divorce statutes.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 transferred ecclesiastical matrimonial jurisdiction to civil courts, fundamentally altering procedure and remedy. Modern English law uses the term in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, which governs divorce, nullity, and judicial separation in the Family Division. In the United States, the term has no uniform statutory meaning; matrimonial law is governed state by state under a variety of labels including "domestic relations," "family law," and "divorce law," with no single federal framework outside constitutional floor constraints.