Marriage

Marriage is a socially or legally recognized union between spouses. Its rules, rights, and meanings vary across societies and historical periods.

Spouse: A spouse is a person joined to another person in marriage. Marriage defines the relationship between the people it recognizes as spouses.
Marriage license: A marriage license is official authorization required by some jurisdictions before a civil marriage ceremony. It is one administrative step by which a state permits a marriage to be registered.
Ancient Roman marriage: Ancient Roman marriage comprised legal and social practices governing unions, households, and family status in Rome. Roman practices reveal how marriage could organize citizenship, property, and household authority.
Domestic partnership: A domestic partnership is a legally recognized relationship that grants some rights associated with marriage without being marriage itself. It offers formal recognition while remaining a distinct legal status.
Coverture: Coverture was a common-law doctrine that historically subsumed a married woman's legal identity under her husband's in specified contexts. It shows how marriage once restricted women's independent legal and property rights.
Kinship: Kinship is the network of relationships formed through descent, marriage, and adoption. Marriage creates or reshapes ties between families and kin groups.
Marriage certificate: A marriage certificate is an official record documenting a marriage. It provides evidence that a marriage has been legally registered.
Confucianism: Confucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical tradition emphasizing relationships, ritual, and social order. Confucian family ethics shaped marriage customs and expectations in several East Asian societies.
Cohabitation: Cohabitation is the practice of living together in an intimate relationship without necessarily marrying. It can resemble married life while lacking marriage's formal status.
Same-sex marriage: Same-sex marriage is marriage between two people of the same sex, recognized by law in some jurisdictions. Its legal recognition has expanded access to marital rights and challenged gendered definitions of marriage.

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