MARRIAGE, the legal union of man and woman for life; the state or condi tion of being married; wedlock. In law marriage is regarded in no other light than a civil contract. The law allows it to be valid where the parties were willing to contract, able to contract, and did con tract in the form required by law. In England, whence our laws are derived, disabilities to contract were formerly considered as either canonical or civil. Consanguinity, affinity, and corporal in firmity were canonical disabilities, mak ing the marriage voidable, but not ipso facto void, till sentence of nullity had been obtained. The last of these is now, however, the only canonical disability on which marriages, otherwise regular, can be declared void. The others have by statute been declared civil disabilities, which make the contract void ab initio. In the United States the marriage laws are as diverse as the statutes of the com monwealths are in other features, and there are various impediments unknown to the English law. In some States the law is founded on the English statutes and embraces features of both canonical and civil law prohibiting marriage for all of the causes heretofore enumerated. In others consanguinity of less degree than that of sister and brother forms no bar to the marriage of persons, while in yet others a difference of race will inhibit an alliance. The absence of a recognized
status of the Church in the United States necessarily places all obstacles to mar riage in the catalogue of civil disability, and in many of the States a ceremonial celebration is not necessary to render a marriage valid, mutual consent before witnesses (or subsequent acknowledg ment before witnesses) constituting what is known as a common law marriage. In all of the States, besides the reasons here adverted to there are three other civil disabilities: (1) A prior marriage (without legal release), in which case, be sides the penalties consequent upon it as a felony, the second marriage is void. (2) Want of age, which is sufficient to avoid all other contracts, a fortiori it ought to avoid this, the most important contract of any. (3) Want of reason. Marriages are dissolved 'by death or di vorce.
Communal marriage, a name for the condition which is sometimes called hetairism or promiscuity.
Complex marriage, the domestic rela tionship between the sexes existing in the American sect calling themselves Perfec tionists.
Marriage by capture, the practice of getting wives by theft or force.