Minimum Marriage Age in the United States

Marriage under 18 was lawful in all fifty states as recently as 2017. Since then it has become one of the fastest-moving areas of American family law: a state has enacted a complete ban roughly once a year, and the pace has accelerated rather than slowed. That movement is why so much of the material circulating online is out of date, and why the figures below carry a verification date.

At 18, the rule is uniform

In every state, a person aged 18 may marry without parental consent and without court approval. There are two exceptions to that uniformity, and both concern the age at which consent is no longer required rather than the age at which marriage becomes possible: Nebraska sets it at 19 and Mississippi at 21. Below 18, nothing is uniform.

Jurisdictions that prohibit marriage under 18

These jurisdictions set 18 as an absolute floor. There is no parental-consent route, no judicial override, and no pregnancy exception.

Oklahoma is the most recent addition and the one most likely to be reported incorrectly. Senate Bill 504 became law on 13 May 2026 without the governor’s signature, after passing the Senate unanimously and clearing the House by a single vote. It does not take effect until 1 November 2026, and it does not disturb marriages entered into before that date. Until then, Oklahoma’s previous rules remain operative.

Two U.S. territories, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have also eliminated marriage under 18.

States that still permit marriage under 18

Roughly two thirds of states continue to allow it. The structures vary too much to reduce to a single number per state, which is why this page does not attempt a fifty-row age table. Depending on the jurisdiction, a marriage involving a minor may require some combination of:

• Consent of a parent or legal guardian
• Approval by a judge, sometimes following an interview with the minor
• A minimum age floor, most commonly 16 or 17
• A cap on the age difference between the two parties
• A pregnancy or paternity finding
• Emancipation of the minor
• A waiting period before the licence issues

A small group of states set no explicit statutory floor once every exception is counted. California, Mississippi and New Mexico fall into this category, as did Oklahoma before SB 504. In these states the question is not what age the statute names but whether a court will approve the marriage. California added judicial review, interviews and court oversight in 2018 without eliminating the option itself.

Several states have tightened their rules without going all the way to a complete ban. Texas began requiring emancipation for anyone under 18 in 2017. Florida set a floor of 17 with a parental-consent requirement and an age-gap cap in 2018. Georgia adopted a similar structure in 2019. Ohio permits marriage at 17 with court approval, and a bipartisan bill to raise it to 18 cleared a Senate committee in June 2026 without reaching a floor vote.

Marriage age is not the age of consent

This is the most common confusion on the topic, and it runs in both directions. A state can set the age of consent at 16 while prohibiting marriage under 18. It can equally set the age of consent at 18 while still permitting a 17-year-old to marry with court approval. The two statutes serve different purposes and are amended by different legislative processes, so neither figure tells you anything reliable about the other. Our age of consent map covers the criminal-law side separately.

Where marriage does interact with criminal law

A number of state criminal codes exclude a spouse from the definition of the offense, which makes marital status a genuine element rather than a technicality. California’s statute is written this way, and Texas retains a spousal defense. Others have removed or narrowed that exclusion. Where a state has both eliminated minor marriage and removed the spousal exception, the interaction disappears entirely.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. Marriage does not displace federal law. And it does not affect offenses that turn on a position of authority or trust, which are drafted independently of marital status. See statutory offenses and how they are charged for how these provisions fit together.

Why the numbers are hard to pin down

Marriage-age tables circulate widely and are frequently wrong. Some are simply stale, still reporting a figure of four or six banning states. Others list jurisdictions as having complete bans when they do not — Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Montana and Hawaii all appear on such lists despite permitting marriage under 18 in some form.

There are three structural reasons this keeps happening:

• Enactment is not commencement. Oklahoma’s ban became law in May 2026 but does not operate until November. A table compiled in between can be defensibly right or wrong depending on which date it uses.
• Partial reform reads like a ban. A state that raises its floor to 17 and adds an age-gap cap has changed a great deal without eliminating minor marriage, and summaries routinely collapse the distinction.
• Administration is local. Licences are issued by county clerks, and practice can differ within a single state.

The figures on this page were checked in September 2026 against the trackers maintained by Unchained At Last and the Tahirih Justice Center, and against contemporaneous reporting on the Oklahoma legislation. They should still be confirmed against the current state code before being relied on for anything consequential.

Scale of the practice

Research by Unchained At Last identified roughly 300,000 minors married in the United States between 2000 and 2018, with a later extension of that work putting the figure near 315,000 through 2021 and identifying children as young as 10 among them. The overwhelming majority were girls married to adult men. That research is the empirical basis for most of the legislative activity described above, and it is why the reform trend has been bipartisan in several states, including Oklahoma.

If you need help

If you are facing pressure to marry, or are concerned for someone who is, that is a situation where support exists independently of what any state statute permits. The victim support resources page lists confidential services, and the legal aid directory covers free and low-cost representation. A family law attorney in the relevant state can advise on the specifics; this page cannot.

Related guides

• Marriage Age Checker
• U.S. age of consent map
• Age of consent, state by state
• Parental consent laws
• Glossary of terms