Also known as: vir et ux · vir et uxorem · husband and wife · coverture
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A Latin phrase denoting a husband and wife. The phrase identifies the married pair as a single legal unit in traditional common-law rules governing property conveyances, privileges, and certain criminal liabilities.
Veronica Varela and her husband received a deed granting land to them and the issue of their marriage who enter a designated profession. The grant satisfied the requirement that the conveyance run to two persons who are or might become husband and wife together with a class of their issue. The couple therefore held the estate in the protected concurrent form recognized under the applicable rule.
Violet Vidal discussed a business plan with her husband in their bedroom with no third parties present. When the government later sought to compel the husband to disclose those statements, the court applied the presumption that communications between spouses are confidential. The husband therefore could not be forced to reveal the content of the private conversation.
Vanessa Vega and her husband took title under a deed conveying property to them as husband and wife together with a designated class of their issue. The language met the statutory condition that the conveyance run in favor of two persons who are husband and wife and the issue of such persons. The couple therefore acquired the protected concurrent estate authorized in the jurisdiction.
Valerie Voss and her husband signed a cryopreservation consent form that expressly described frozen embryos created through IVF as their personal property. When a later research agreement attempted to recharacterize the embryos, the court treated the original form as controlling because it reflected the couple's property rights. The spouses therefore retained authority to demand removal of the embryos.
Vera Vargas and her husband received medical advice concerning contraception from a licensed physician. State officials sought to enforce a statute criminalizing the provision of such advice to married couples. The court held that the statute violated the right of marital privacy protected within the penumbras of the Bill of Rights.
Estelle Griswold served as Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Dr. C. Lee Buxton served as the League's Medical Director and was a professor at Yale Medical School. Together they opened and operated a center in New Haven that was open from November 1 to November 10, 1961. At the center they gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free. The statutes involved were sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). Section 53-32 made it a crime to use any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception. Section 54-196 punished accessories as principals. The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed the convictions. The Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut affirmed that judgment in State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A. 2d 479. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction. The appellants asserted standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married persons with whom they had a professional relationship. A criminal conviction for serving married couples removes doubts about case or controversy. The rights of husband and wife would be diluted unless considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.
Veronica Villanueva lived with her son and grandson in a single-family home. City officials cited her under an ordinance that limited occupancy to narrowly defined nuclear-family units. The court ruled that the ordinance arbitrarily intruded on protected choices concerning family living arrangements rooted in the Nation's history and tradition.
In early 1973, Mrs. Inez Moore received a notice of violation from the city of East Cleveland. The notice stated that her grandson John Moore, Jr., was an illegal occupant of her home. It directed her to comply with the housing ordinance. Mrs. Moore lived in her East Cleveland home together with her son Dale Moore, Sr., and her two grandsons Dale Moore, Jr., and John Moore, Jr. John came to live with her after his mother's death when he was less than one year old. When she failed to remove John from the home, the city filed a criminal charge against her. Mrs. Moore moved to dismiss the charge. She claimed that the ordinance was constitutionally invalid on its face. Her motion was overruled. Upon conviction she was sentenced to five days in jail and a $25 fine. The East Cleveland ordinance limited occupancy of a dwelling unit to members of a single family. The ordinance defined family to include only a husband or wife of the nominal head of the household, unmarried children of the head or spouse provided they have no children residing with them, a parent of the head or spouse, or not more than one dependent child of the head or spouse along with that child's spouse and dependent children. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction after giving full consideration to her constitutional claims. The Ohio Supreme Court denied review of the case. The United States Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction of her appeal.
Yes. At common law a husband and wife were treated as a single legal person. Because the law did not recognize them as two separate legal actors, they could not by themselves form the two distinct parties necessary to create a conspiracy.
…(DOMA), 110 Stat. 2419, defining marriage for all federal-law purposes as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” 1 U.S.C. §7. The new and widespread discussion of the subject led other States to a different conclusion. In 2003, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held the State’s…
…touch economic problems, business affairs, or social conditions. This law, however, operates directly on an intimate relation of husband and wife and their physician’s role in one aspect of that relation. The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights. The right to educate a child in a…
…defines “family” in a way that excludes some relatives from living together. Specifically, the ordinance permits only a husband and wife, their unmarried children, parents and their children, or a widow or widower with their unmarried children to live together. It does not permit a grandmother to live with her grandson if he…
Syllabus The product-liability action that gave rise to this case was instituted in an Oklahoma state court by a husband and wife to recover for personal injuries they suffered in Oklahoma in an automobile accident. The automobile had been purchased by them in New York while they were New York residents, and the…
…an accused was not permitted to testify in his own behalf because of his interest in the proceeding; second, the concept that husband and wife were one, and that since the woman had no recognized separate legal existence, the husband
No. A privilege against disclosure of communications between spouses and a defense of immunity based on the relationship of husband and wife may not be invoked in a proceeding under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act.
Yes. Confidential communications between husband and wife are privileged and protected from compelled disclosure. A presumption of confidentiality applies, and the government bears the burden of overcoming that presumption.
The phrase identifies the precise parties required. A conveyance made in favor of two persons who are husband and wife and the issue or a designated class of the issue of such two persons satisfies the statutory condition for creating the protected concurrent estate.
No. The Fourteenth Amendment forbids state laws that use racial classifications to burden the fundamental right to marry or its incidents. Tenancy by the entirety is a distinctive marital property form resting on the legal unity of husband and wife, so denying it on racial grounds triggers strict scrutiny and fails.