Kit Roberts
Warning: This article contains discussions of child marriage that some readers may find distressing.
A shocking number of US states still allow child marriage - which can leave minors in a 'nightmarish legal trap'.
We might prefer to think of the horrifying, abusive practice as something from the darker parts of the past, but this is far from the case.
Child marriage was legal across the US as late as 2018, when some states finally introduced bans.
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Between 2000 and 2018, some 300,000 children, 86 percent of them girls, were married legally under US law.
Children who marry face a much more difficult legal battle getting out of the marriage as they have to rely on parents, who may have signed off on the marriage, or their spouse to act on their behalf.
Because a child is legally unable to act on their own, they are effectively trapped in a child marriage by the law.
As for how many states still allow child marriage - of the 50 states in the US just 17 have an age limit on marriage which is at least 18 years.
This means that in 33 out of the 50 states child marriage is still legal, with some states having laws around parental consent.
Of those there are also different groups, with some having a minimum age of 17 years, some 16 years, some 15 years, and most disturbingly of all, four states having no age limit on marriage at all, with these being California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.
Fraidy Reiss is an advocate against child marriage in the US, and wants to introduce a minimum age of 18 across the country.
She explained that this not because of emotional maturity, but because at 18 adult legal rights come into effect.
She told 19thnews: “We’re not arguing that you wake up on your 18th birthday with a newfound wisdom and maturity and the ability to choose a life partner.
“It’s about legal capacity: you wake up on your 18th birthday with legal rights of adulthood.”
He described child marriages as a 'nightmarish legal trap'.
Reiss also addressed some of the misconceptions around child marriage in the US.
She said: “Most Americans agree that forced marriage and child marriage are terrible and heartbreaking.
"They imagine this happening on the other side of the world, and I wish there was something we could do to show them it’s happening here, too, largely because we have outdated, archaic and dangerous laws that need to be updated.”
It comes after a disturbing historical case in 1937 in which a 22-year-old man married a nine-year-old girl in Tennessee. They falsified Winstead's age, but at the time there was no legal minimum age to marry in the state.
Charlie Johns and Eunice Winstead would have a marriage that lasted decades, and their first child was born when she was just 14 years old.
In the weeks following the marriage, Tennessee introduced a legal minimum age of marriage at 16, which has since risen to 17.
Alabama – 16
Alaska – 16
Arizona – 16
Arkansas – 16
California – No age limit
Colorado – 16
Florida – 17
Georgia – 17
Hawaii – 15
Idaho – 16
Illinois – 16
Indiana – 16
Iowa – 16
Kansas – 15
Kentucky – 17
Louisiana – 16
Maryland – 17
Mississippi – No age limit
Montana – 16
Nebraska – 17
Nevada – 17
New Mexico – No age limit
North Carolina – 16
North Dakota – 16
Ohio – 17
Oklahoma – No age limit
South Carolina – 16
South Dakota – 16
Tennessee – 17
Texas – 16
Utah – 16
West Virginia – 16
Wisconsin – 16
Wyoming – 16