Story at a glance:
- North Carolina currently allows marriages to those as young as 14.
- The new legislation would also add a four-year spousal difference, making it illegal for 16-year-olds to marry someone older than 20.
- “North Carolina is one of the friendliest states in the South to give them safe haven.”
North Carolina, a state that currently allows couples to get married as young as 14 with a judge’s approval, is set to introduce a bill that would raise the minimum marriage age from 14 to 16, The Guardian reports.
Children are allowed to get married under the age of 16 in 13 states. In North Carolina, children as young as 14 can get married if they become pregnant and a judge approves it, according to The Guardian. In nine of the 13 states, there is no age restriction, and a judge’s approval is all that is needed.
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The new legislation would also add a four-year spousal difference, making it illegal for 16-year-olds to marry someone older than 20.
The bill to raise the minimum age to get married reached its final legislative approval on Wednesday, ABC11 reports. The state’s House voted unanimously on the bill, which will now go to the Senate and then the governor’s desk.
States such as Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee have recently raised their minimum marriage age, with North Carolina and Alaska still expressly permitting marriages as young as 14, according to The Guardian.
“We will have moved the needle and made North Carolina no longer at the very bottom of the barrel of states,” Drew Reisinger, the register of deeds in Buncombe County, said, according to The Guardian. But, he said, “we’re still going to be putting a lot of children in harm’s way.”
Reisinger told The Guardian that Buncombe County is a destination for child marriages, one where even people from other states come to have their marriages approved.
A 49-year-old Kentucky man reportedly accompanied by a 17-year-old minor wanted to get married in Buncombe County, having filed legal applications seeking their marriage license, according to The New York Post.
“North Carolina is one of the friendliest states in the South to give them safe haven,” Reisinger said.
“It’s a generational divide,” said Sen. Vickie Sawyer, a Davidson County Republican, according to The Guardian. “It was older members — both Democrat and Republicans — that had those personal stories of family members who had been married and it turned out OK.”
Sawyer sponsored a bill to raise the age to 18, according to The Guardian. The state lawmakers settled to raise the age to 16.
North Carolina lawmakers need one more Senate vote by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper before the bill will likely be signed into law.
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Published on Aug 16,2021