The minimum age for marriage in the United States is set by each state. For all states except two, a couple may marry without the requirement for parental consent when both are 18 years of age or older (in Nebraska, both must be over 19, and in Mississippi, over 21.) In most states, couples are allowed to marry at a younger age with the consent of both parents or with judicial consent; the minimum age for marriage when all exemptions are taken into account varies from state to state.
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34 states [1] have an absolute minimum age for marriage, even when exemptions are included, set by statute. This age varies between 14 and 18.
In the remaining states, there is a separate minimum age for marriage with parental consent, but legal exceptions exist which can allow marriage at ages below the minimum marriage age in some cases, mostly requiring both parental and judicial consent, which is often allowed only in the case of pregnancy. 16 of the U.S. states do not have a legal minimum age of marriage when these judicial exceptions are taken into account. Although in such states there is no set minimum age by statute, the traditional common law minimum age is 14 for boys and 12 for girls - ages which have been confirmed by case law in some states. [2]
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are currently 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory and shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders. Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.
In law, common law is that body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases, and legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue. The court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, and those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, and regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch. Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems.
In 23 of the states, children under 16 can be married. Over the past 15 years, more than 200,000 minors married in US, and in Tennessee girls as young as 10 were married in 2001, [3] before the state set a minimum age of 17 in 2018. [4]
In law, a minor is a person under a certain age, usually the age of majority, which legally demarcates childhood from adulthood. The age of majority depends upon jurisdiction and application, but it is generally 18. Minor may also be used in contexts that are unconnected to the overall age of majority. For example, the drinking age in the United States is usually 21, and younger people are sometimes called minors in the context of alcohol law, even if they are at least 18. The term underage often refers to those under the age of majority, but it may also refer to persons under a certain age limit, such as the drinking age, smoking age, age of consent, marriageable age, driving age, voting age, etc. Such age limits are often different from the age of majority.
Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by eight states, with Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the west, and Missouri to the northwest. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Nashville is the state's capital and largest city, with a 2017 population of 667,560 and a 2017 metro population of 1,903,045. Tennessee's second largest city is Memphis, which had a population of 652,236 in 2017.
