Which U.S. states currently allow marriage below age 16 and under what conditions?
Executive summary
A patchwork of state laws still permits marriages below age 16 in parts of the United States, but the precise number of states and the conditions that allow those marriages vary by source and recent reforms; some states explicitly set lower minimums (15 or 16), several retain pregnancy or judicial/parental-consent exceptions that can permit younger unions, and a few states have no statutory minimum at all, effectively allowing judges or parents to authorize marriages of any age [1] [2] [3].
1. How many states still permit marriage under 16 — the contested headline
Estimates differ because states have changed laws recently and because advocates count different types of exceptions; some reporting and advocacy groups say child marriage (under 18) remains legal in roughly 34–46 states depending on definition and date, while others report that 20 states set 16 as the minimum, two states set 15, and four states have no minimum at all — figures that illustrate both the prevalence and the legislative churn rather than a single settled map [4] [1] [3] [5].
2. The legal routes that let sub‑16 marriages happen — parental consent, judicial waiver, pregnancy and emancipation
Three recurring mechanisms appear across state laws to permit marriages below the nominal age of majority: parental (or guardian) consent combined in some places with a lower statutory minimum; judicial approval or a “best interests” finding that can override age rules; and exceptions when one party is pregnant or has given birth, which in several states historically allowed younger teens to wed — those mechanisms are repeatedly documented in state summaries and advocacy reports [6] [7] [1].
3. States that explicitly set minimums under 16 and the states with no minimum — specific but evolving categories
Some sources list a small set of states that historically allowed marriage at 15 (examples named include Maryland, Hawaii and Kansas in older reporting) and others that set 16 as the minimum in statute, but multiple recent legislative changes have moved many states to 18 or 17; equivalently, independent trackers and advocacy groups identify a handful of states with no statutory minimum, meaning parental or judicial waivers have been used to authorize marriages of children under 16 — the exact list shifts with each legislative session [8] [1] [3].
4. Court orders and “best interest” hearings: how judges become gatekeepers
Where statutes require judicial approval for under‑age marriages, judges typically evaluate petitions under a “best interests of the child” standard and may consider factors like pregnancy, evidence of coercion, or whether the minor is emancipated; legal guides and state law summaries show that courts vary widely in how strictly they scrutinize such petitions, which creates opportunities for both protection and misuse depending on local practice [6] [9].
5. Pregnancy and emancipation as special‑case paths to marriage
Multiple state summaries and legal resources note that pregnancy or childbirth has been used as an explicit statutory exception in some jurisdictions, and that emancipation — whether by court order or statute — has also been treated as a route to permit minors to marry; reform advocates have repeatedly targeted those specific exceptions when pushing to raise the marriage age to 18 without exception [7] [2].
6. Recent reform momentum — narrowing but not eliminating exceptions
Since 2018 a wave of state laws has raised the marriage age to 18 in some states and narrowed exceptions in others, with advocacy groups and some legislatures succeeding in closing pregnancy and parental‑consent loopholes while many states still retain limited exceptions or lower minimums; reporting shows bills continuing to be introduced to close remaining gaps, underscoring that the legal landscape is actively changing [4] [2] [10].
7. What the reporting cannot settle here
Existing summaries converge on the qualitative claim that multiple legal pathways allow marriages below 16 in at least some states, but the precise, up‑to‑date list of which specific states currently permit sub‑16 marriages and under exactly which statutory text cannot be fully determined from these sources alone because numbers and statutes have changed recently and trackers use different cutoffs — a definitive current state-by-state legal table requires consultation of each state’s latest statutes or a live tracker such as Unchained At Last or state legislative records [1] [5].