Besides teaching you a few history lessons, these 15 marriage laws from around the world will show you how a woman’s life was broken piece by piece in the name of marriage.
The action for loss of consortium and criminal conversation (England and colonial US)
Under common law, a married woman’s body and labor within the home were the property of her husband.
Under the tort of “criminal conversation,” a husband could seek financial compensation from another man if his wife engaged in adultery. In these cases, the wife was not allowed to testify or defend herself in court. She was treated as damaged property belonging to her husband.
If someone else injured a wife, her husband could sue that person for ” loss of consortium,” allowing him to collect cash from the defendant for the loss of his wife’s domestic services and companionship. The wife herself received no part of the compensation granted to her husband.
The expatriation act of 1907 (United States)
Under this law, prior to its revision, if an American-born woman married a foreign national, she automatically lost her US citizenship.
The government revoked her passport, her right to vote, and her legal status as a citizen. And she instantly became an alien in her birth country, regardless of whether she ever left the US.
If she was widowed or abandoned by her husband, she had to undergo the demeaning process of federal naturalization to obtain the civil rights she was born with once again.
Article 324 of the French penal code and crime of passion exemptions (1810)
If a man’s wife was caught cheating on him inside their residence, he could kill her there and then be pardoned by Napoleonic France’s penal code.
Article 324 actually reduced the charge for a husband killing his wife in a fit of jealous rage to a petty misdemeanor, or acquitted him altogether.
A wife who killed her adulterous husband under the same circumstances was given the death penalty or sentenced to hard labor for life, as there was no right of defense for women.
The custody of infants act and the common law doctrine of paternal right (19th-century Britain)
Before reforms in the mid-1800s, mothers had no legal rights regarding their legitimate children.
Under British common law, children belonged exclusively to their fathers. If a husband wanted, he could take his children away from their mother at any time for no reason. If a mother left an abusive marriage, her husband could legally keep her children from her forever, as mothers were denied any legal right to their children.
Essentially, a man could take his wife’s departure as grounds to cut her off from her children as punishment.
The fault requirement and the doctrine of recrimination (US and UK divorce law)
Under old divorce laws, before no-fault, one had to prove serious misconduct in court in order to escape a marriage. Examples include adultery and physical abuse.
But under a rule called the “doctrine of recrimination,” if a man proved his wife was guilty of some technical fault (say, yelling back at him; running out of the house for safety; calling another man while mad at him), the judge was required by law to decline the divorce.
Thousands of women were thereby trapped forever with abusive men, because the only way they could defend themselves was to forfeit their only escape hatch.
The “seduction under promise of marriage” penal statutes (19th-century global law)
If a man had se* with a woman before marriage after promising to marry her but later decided not to marry her, he could be criminally charged under penal codes worldwide during the 19th century.
But, if he married the woman who filed charges against him before the conclusion of the trial, he could immediately have all charges dropped.
Judges frequently pressured young women into marrying the very men who had seduced, tricked, or assaulted them, all to steer clear of public scandal and legal proceedings.
The Roman law of manus and capitis deminutio (Ancient Rome)
Under the earliest forms of Roman civil law, when a woman entered into a marriage, she experienced capitis deminutio, a diminishing of her status as a human being.
She was removed from her birth family and transferred to the authority of her husband or father-in-law. There she became subject to his patria potestas, or paternal power. She was no longer the daughter of her birth father, but rather the daughter of her husband.
A married woman had no legal capacity to own property, control her own inheritance, or make any legal decisions without her husband’s consent because everything she owned automatically transferred to him upon marriage.
The married women’s restraint upon anticipation clauses (19th-century property law)
Trust clauses called “restraints upon anticipation” were inserted into the marriage contracts of wealthy Victorian brides to keep husbands from overspending their wives’ inheritances.
Though intended to protect family wealth, the clauses financially crippled women.
Unable to access her principal funds, a wife could not leave an abusive husband, pay for necessities, or start her own business; legally, her money was frozen until her husband’s death.
Spanish civil code article 57 and the permiso marital (Spain, 1889–1975)
Still functioning during the Francoist period in Spain, Article 57 of the Spanish Civil Code included the permiso marital, whereby a married woman was deemed a legal minor.
She could not work without her husband’s permission, open a bank account, own property, apply for a passport, or travel outside of her birth town without her husband signing a legal document.
If a woman’s husband would not grant permission by signing such a permit, there was no legal system for her to appeal to.
The English common law “restitution of conjugal rights” decrees
Should a wife abandon her husband’s house because she was unhappy or because he was cruel to her, the husband could file suit against her in ecclesiastical court for “Restitution of Conjugal Rights”.
If he won his case, the court issued an injunction ordering the disobedient wife to return to her husband’s house and resume physical relations with her husband.
Should she fail to comply with the court order, police officers would arrive at her house and escort her to prison where she would be thrown in jail indefinitely for contempt of court until she agreed to return home to her husband.
The civil code of the German empire and the husband’s right of termination (1900)
When Germany consolidated its civil laws into one national authoritative code in 1900, section 1358 clearly awarded husbands the unilateral legal authority to fire their wives from their jobs without her consent.
If the husband no longer wanted his wife to work, he could simply notify her boss and the boss was legally obligated to dismiss her on the spot and give her final paycheck to her husband.
The loss of dower statutes for alleged wife elopement (statute of Westminster II, 1285)
Passed during the reign of Edward I of England, this law specified that if a woman left her husband and went willingly with another man, she would lose her dower rights.
The woman’s dower was her only legal protection that gave her claim to a share of her husband’s real property upon his death. Even if her husband had subjected her to physical abuse or housed “lewd women” within their home, her departure still meant she could not take any of her property.
A husband’s infidelity or desertion, however, carried no such legal penalty for his property.
The 1935 Nuremberg laws: Law for the protection of German blood and German honor
The Nazi Law prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jewish people and Germans of German blood.
It declared all intermarried couples criminals overnight. The state bullied Jewish wives and husbands living in so-called mixed marriages to encourage their non-Jewish spouses to divorce them.
Once the divorce took place, the woman’s citizenship protections were revoked and she became subject to property expropriation, enslavement, and deportation.
Colonial India’s restitution framework and age of consent writs (Rukhmabai case, 1884)
The British enforced English common law in India where child marriages were already prominent.
An 11 year-old-girl was married off by her parents. When she refused to live with him upon reaching puberty, her husband filed for restitution of conjugal rights against her.
Rukhmabai was forced by British courts to live in marital cohabitation with a stranger or be imprisoned until she consented. And her body was used as a means of coercion under colonial contract law.
Byzantine imperial edicts on abduction marriage (Raptus)
According to the Codex of Justinian and later Byzantine law, if a woman was kidnapped and then tricked into marrying her kidnapper without consent (known as abduction marriage) and with prior consent from her guardian/family, the woman was seen as a consenting party to her own abduction.
Under no circumstances could she inherit family wealth or property, even if she only agreed because she was threatened with death if she didn’t consent.
Essentially, the woman suffered financial penalties due to property loss, while her abductor gained social advantage from their union.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
Like our content? Be sure to follow us.
10 women who earned their place in history by being ‘evil’
Throughout history, women who have overcome stereotypes and expectations to take power for themselves often earn evil or bad because they refused to just exist peacefully on someone else’s terms.
