Marriage Laws

Examples of Marriage Laws in the following topics:

• Racial Stratification

  • Not until 1967 were laws outlawing interracial marriage abolished in the United States.
  • These laws were referred to as miscegenation laws (miscegenation means "mixing races").
  • This was the experience of Mildred and Richard Loving, who married in 1958 in Washington D.C., a district in the US that no longer had a law against interracial marriage.
  • Virginia, which abolished miscegenation laws in the U.S.
  • Still as late as 2002, close to 10% of people in the U.S. favored a law prohibiting interracial marriage.

• Change in Marriage Rate

  • According to the United States Census Bureau, 2,077,000 marriages occurred in the United States in 2009.
  • Marriage laws have changed over the course of United States history, including the removal of bans on interracial marriage.
  • In the twenty-first century, laws have been passed enabling same-sex marriages in several states.
  • Native Americans have the second lowest marriage rate at 37.9%.
  • Hispanics have a 45.1% marriage rate, with a 3.5% separation rate.

• The Movement for Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights

  • First and foremost on the gay rights platform was the need to overturn laws that made homosexuality illegal.
  • DOMA defined marriage as between one man and one woman in federal law, meaning that the federal government would not confer benefits to same-sex couples granted marriage licenses by states.
  • Other states have passed laws allowing for same-sex civil unions.
  • Civil unions provide the legal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, but not the title of marriage.
  • Challenges to bans on same-sex marriage contend that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are discriminatory.

• New Developments in Families

  • Women and men began delaying the age of first marriage in order to invest in their earning power before marriage by spending more time in school.
  • living with someone before marriage as a way to avoid divorce
  • In some countries (such as Scotland) and some states in the United States, cohabiting is viewed as a legal relationship and is referred to as a common-law marriage after the duration of a specified period or the birth of a child to the couple.
  • Today, seven states (North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Idaho and Michigan) still criminalize cohabitation by opposite-sex couples, although anti-cohabitation laws are generally not enforced.
  • Cohabitation runs contrary to Islamic Law and is not common in predominantly Muslim countries.

• Families and Inequality

  • Racist laws adopted by some societies in the past, such as Nazi-era w:Germany, apartheid-era South Africa and most of the United States in the first half of the 20th century, which prohibited marriage between persons of different races, could also be considered examples of endogamy.
  • In the U.S., these laws were largely repealed between 1940 and 1960.
  • Supreme Court declared all such laws unconstitutional in the case of Loving v.
  • In England and Wales, it was Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act that first required a formal ceremony of marriage, thereby curtailing the practice of Fleet Marriage.
  • This law made the declaration of the marriage before an official clerk of the civil administration (spouses affirming their will to marry) the procedure to make a marriage legally valid and effective, and reduced the clerical marriage to a private ceremony.

• Homophobia

  • Gay marriage has become a sensitive political issue over the past decade, partially due to the fact that the federal government and state governments have different laws about gay marriage.
  • In 1996, the federal government passed the Defense of Marriage Act.
  • According to this act, the federal government cannot recognize gay marriages, and a state that does not recognize gay marriage does not have to accept the marriage license given to a same-sex couple in a different state that does recognize same-sex marriages.
  • As part of this debate about the legality and morality of gay marriage, 41 states have explicitly banned same-sex marriages, 12 by statute and 29 through amendments to the state constitutions.
  • Laws regarding same-sex marriage vary by state in the U.S.

• Marital Residence

  • Marriage is an institution which can join together people's lives in a variety of emotional and economic ways.
  • A scientific survey of over 1,000 married men and women in the United States found that those who moved in with a lover before engagement or marriage reported significantly lower quality marriages and a greater possibility for splitting up than other couples.
  • Conversely, marriage is not a prerequisite for cohabitation.
  • Conflicting studies on the effect of cohabitation on marriage have been published.
  • Some places, including the state of California, have laws that recognize cohabiting couples as domestic partners.

• Divorce and Its Legal Ramifications

  • For same-sex couples, divorce law is in its infancy and is less than clear on how such unions may be legally dissolved.
  • Divorce laws vary considerably around the world, but in most countries it requires the sanction of a court or other authority in a legal process.
  • Though divorce laws vary among jurisdictions, there are two basic approaches to divorce: fault based, and no-fault based.
  • Key factors include a short marriage, no children, and minimal property.
  • For same-sex couples, divorce law is in its infancy and is less than clear on how such unions may be legally dissolved.

• Factors Associated with Divorce

  • Factors that may lead marriages to end in divorce are infidelity, adultery domestic violence, midlife crises, inexperience, and addictions.
  • Numerous studies have tried to determine why 50 percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce within the first 25 years.
  • Adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than the lawful spouse.
  • This graph illustrates marriage and divorce rates in the U.S. 1990-2007.
  • Discuss five factors that may lead marriages to end in divorce

• Families and Theory

  • In some cultures marriage imposes upon women the obligation to bear children.
  • In other cases, procreative families utilize marital privileges, rights, and laws (if they have access to these opportunities legally) to establish legal parenthood of a child, gain control over sexual services, labor, and / or property, establish a joint fund of property for the benefit of children, and / or establish relations between partner's larger familial networks.
  • In almost all societies, marriage between brothers and sisters is forbidden, with Ancient Egyptian, Hawaiian, and Inca royalty being the rare exceptions.
  • In many societies, marriage between some first cousins is preferred, while at the other extreme, the medieval Catholic church prohibited marriage even between distant cousins.
  • The present day Catholic Church still maintains a standard of required distance (in both consanguinity and affinity) for marriage.