Definition
Reconciliation has two distinct legal meanings, operating in largely separate areas of law:
1. FAMILY LAW. The renewal of amicable relations between persons who had been at enmity or variance, usually implying forgiveness of injuries on one or both sides. In marriage law specifically, reconciliation refers to the voluntary resumption of the marital relationship — including cohabitation and the mutual abandonment of grievances — by spouses who had been separated, estranged, or in the midst of divorce proceedings. A proven reconciliation can void a prior separation agreement, defeat a pending divorce action grounded on fault, or operate as condonation of marital misconduct.
2. ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL LAW. The process of comparing two or more sets of financial records — such as internal bookkeeping accounts against bank statements, or subsidiary ledgers against a general ledger — to identify and resolve discrepancies. Account reconciliation is a standard internal control mechanism in corporate governance, fiduciary administration, and auditing practice. Failure to reconcile accounts can give rise to breach of fiduciary duty claims, securities violations, or evidence of fraud.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The re-establishment of friendly relations; conciliation, rapprochement. Also, in accounting, the process of comparing and resolving apparent differences between sets of records.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of reconciling, or the state of being reconciled; restoration to harmony; renewal of friendship. Also, reduction to congruence or consistency; removal of inconsistency.
The common meaning of reconciliation tracks closely to the family law meaning. The gap worth flagging is precision: in ordinary speech, reconciliation is emotional and relational. In law, it is a triggering event with measurable legal consequences — it can extinguish contractual obligations (a deed of separation), revive rights (consortium, inheritance), or defeat a cause of action. The accounting meaning, now well established in commercial and regulatory practice, appears in Wiktionary but is absent from Webster's 1913 and from every historical legal dictionary listed here, signaling how recently it entered formal legal usage.
Common Confusion
Reconciliation and condonation are related but not identical. Condonation is the conditional forgiveness of a specific marital offense — historically a defense to divorce — and requires knowledge of the offense, forgiveness, and resumption of marital relations. Reconciliation is broader: it describes the general renewal of the marital relationship and need not be tied to a specific wrongful act. Black's 2nd Edition explicitly flags the overlap, calling the terms "synonymous or analogous" in divorce law, but the distinction matters in jurisdictions where condonation retains legal effect as a defense. A researcher finding "reconciliation" in an older divorce record should not automatically read it as a technical condonation defense without examining context.
Why It Matters in Research
The family law meaning dominates all historical legal dictionary sources, reflecting the centrality of fault-based divorce doctrine when those sources were compiled. Researchers working in pre-no-fault divorce records — anything before the 1970s in most U.S. jurisdictions — will encounter reconciliation primarily as a fact-specific defense or as grounds for dismissing a divorce proceeding. Its legal consequences in that context were substantial: Bouvier and Rapalje both note that renewed cohabitation constitutes proof of reconciliation and destroys the force of a deed of separation. A separation agreement that appears operative on its face may have been extinguished by conduct never recorded in the agreement itself.
The accounting and financial law meaning is entirely absent from the historical dictionaries here and should not be read back into older sources. When a 19th-century legal document uses "reconciliation," it almost certainly refers to the marital or interpersonal sense. When a 21st-century corporate governance document or securities filing uses the term, it almost certainly refers to accounting. Do not cross-contaminate these meanings across time periods.
Modern family law researchers should also note that reconciliation provisions appear in separation agreements and marital settlement agreements as express clauses — specifying whether the agreement survives or terminates upon reconciliation. This is a drafting and interpretive issue distinct from the common law doctrine.
In legislative contexts, "reconciliation" carries a specialized budget procedure meaning under the Congressional Budget Act (the process by which Congress can pass budget legislation under expedited rules). This meaning is entirely separate from both the family law and accounting meanings and does not appear in the historical dictionaries because it postdates them.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four historical sources are in near-perfect agreement on the core family law definition, though they distribute the explanatory weight differently. Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) leads with the general interpersonal definition — "renewal of amicable relations between two persons who had been at enmity or variance" — and then narrows to marriage law. Bouvier and Rapalje (who quotes Bouvier directly) are more immediately practical, grounding the definition in the consequence: reconciliation destroys a deed of separation and is proven by renewed cohabitation.
The Bouvier/Rapalje framing is more useful for researchers dealing with historical equity and ecclesiastical records, because it tells you what reconciliation did, not just what it was. Black's framing — emphasizing forgiveness and restored amity — is more useful for understanding how courts evaluated whether reconciliation had occurred when the parties disputed it.
None of the historical sources address the accounting meaning, the legislative budget meaning, or the theological sense. The theological sense (reconciliation with God) appears in Webster's 1913 but carries no legal weight in secular legal texts; it appears in ecclesiastical law contexts and occasionally in historical church property disputes but should not be imported into civil legal analysis.
Jurisdictional Note
In no-fault divorce jurisdictions — now the overwhelming majority of U.S. states — the legal significance of reconciliation in divorce proceedings is considerably reduced compared to the fault-era doctrine the historical dictionaries describe. Some jurisdictions still recognize reconciliation as voiding a separation agreement unless the agreement expressly provides otherwise. Researchers should verify applicable state contract and family law rules before inferring consequences from reconciliation as a historical doctrine.