Definition
Latin. "Under the hope of reconciliation." A phrase from ecclesiastical and domestic relations law describing the conditional basis on which a separated spouse was permitted to remain in the matrimonial home, or on which certain legal obligations between estranged spouses were suspended or continued. The phrase signals that the separation was not treated as permanent or absolute — the parties were regarded as still capable of resuming the marital relationship, and the law adjusted its treatment of their rights and duties accordingly.
In historical matrimonial practice, a court or agreement might permit a wife to remain with her husband, or maintain certain claims of support, sub spe reconciliationis — meaning the arrangement was explicitly framed as provisional, held open by the expectation that full reconciliation might follow. The hope of reconciliation was not merely sentimental language; it carried legal weight by distinguishing a temporary, conditional separation from a formal, legally operative estrangement that might extinguish or alter specific rights.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase appears almost exclusively in historical matrimonial law sources, particularly in equity and ecclesiastical court materials from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Researchers encountering it in primary sources should treat it as a signal about the procedural posture of a separation — the term marks a liminal legal state between cohabitation and formal judicial separation, and the rights at issue (dower, alimony, consortium, the duty to receive a wife) often turned on exactly which side of that line the parties stood.
The single citation shared across all three historical dictionaries — 2 Kent's Commentaries 127 — anchors the term firmly in American equity reception of English ecclesiastical doctrine. James Kent's treatment draws on the canon law tradition in which church courts exercised jurisdiction over matrimonial causes, and researchers working backward from American cases should expect to find the phrase's deeper roots in ecclesiastical reports and civilian commentaries, not common law reporters.
The phrase is essentially extinct in modern legal writing. Divorce law has been comprehensively reformed and secularized since the nineteenth century, and the doctrinal context that gave sub spe reconciliationis its operative meaning — a system in which full divorce was rare or unavailable and courts managed ongoing marital status with equitable tools — no longer exists in its original form. Researchers should be alert to the risk of reading the phrase through modern divorce concepts; it belongs to a world in which separation and divorce were distinct and the latter was exceptional.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in complete agreement, each rendering the phrase as "under the hope of reconcilement" and citing 2 Kent's Commentaries 127 as the sole authority. The uniformity is itself informative: the phrase was narrow enough that a single treatise reference sufficed, and none of the dictionaries expand beyond translation and citation. Burrill identifies the linguistic register explicitly ("L. Lat." — Law Latin), which is useful confirmation that the phrase functioned as a term of art within legal pleading and judicial discourse rather than as descriptive narrative.
The brevity of all three entries reflects the specialized, historically bounded character of the term. None of the sources attempt to generalize the doctrine or apply it beyond the matrimonial context. Researchers should not expect these dictionaries to illuminate the full procedural mechanics of how the hope of reconciliation was assessed or invoked — that analysis requires going to Kent directly, and from Kent to the English ecclesiastical authorities he relied upon.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase belongs to the ecclesiastical law tradition that American equity courts absorbed selectively. Its practical application was most developed in English ecclesiastical courts and later reflected in American equity jurisdiction over matrimonial causes before dedicated family courts existed. It has no meaningful modern jurisdictional footprint.