Law Commons^™

Reviving Proxy Marriage, Andrea B. Carroll

Andrea Beauchamp Carroll

Marriage is merely a contract. It creates myriad rights and responsibilities - essentially conferring a status - but the American states recognize without exception that the parties’ relationship is at base nothing more than a contractual one. Still, modern society has elevated the marriage contract above all others. This distinction has overwhelmingly focused on the very personal nature of the marital relationship, a feature nonexistent in the arms-length contractual dealings with which we are accustomed to working when applying contract law. As a result, marriage is subject to a number of requirements, even at the level of contractual formation, which …