Marriage of convenience
marriage for practical reasons (not love)
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than that of love and commitment. Instead, such a marriage is entered into for personal gain, or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as a political marriage. Cases where those married do not intend to live together as a couple, and typically married only for one of them to gain the right to reside in a country, are considered to be sham marriages. In many cultures, it is usual for parents to decide their adult children's marriages; this is called an arranged marriage.
In ancient Roman Egypt (30 BCE to 395 CE), brother-sister marriages were common, comprising an estimated 15–21% of unions, often to keep property within the family.
Marriages of convenience that are sham and arranged marriages that are forced, are against the law in many jurisdictions.
Legal loophole
Marriages of convenience are often contracted to exploit legal loopholes of various sorts. A couple may wed for one of them to gain citizenship or right of abode, for example, as many countries around the world will grant such rights to anyone married to a resident citizen. In the United States, this practice is known as a green card marriage. In Australia, there have been marriages of convenience to bring attention to the government's Youth Allowance laws.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Marriage of convenience” is marriage for practical reasons (not love). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Marriage, convenience and marriage, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “marriage for practical reasons (not love)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q279394. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Marriage of convenience”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Marriage of convenience primary sources, Marriage of convenience archive and Marriage research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marriage of convenience”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Marriage of convenience” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.