YOU'LL DO

An exploration of “the instrumental use of marriage.”

Zug, a professor of family law, examines in lively detail the prevalence of “blatantly transactional marriages,” unions entered into because of financial or legal benefits. Drawing on sources including court cases, historical anecdotes, and her own family’s history, she provides ample evidence to show how generations of American men and women have used marriage “to combat racial, gender, and class discrimination,” gain money or status, ensure their parental rights, and even elude criminal prosecution. If “gold-diggers”—Melania Trump is Zug’s most recent example—are obvious participants in this kind of marriage, they are hardly alone. When widows of Revolutionary or Civil War veterans were able to claim a pension, many marriages occurred between needy young women and elderly men. Some individuals married for status, or to share in the power of politically influential families; marriage to nobility was a way “for new-money families” to bypass “old-money” social controls. For some would-be immigrants, “marriage was their only immigration option and, frequently, their only path to safety.” Marrying for a green card, Zug notes, “remains perfectly legal.” The author documents ways that transactional marriages have increased the risk of exploitation and abuse, but she finds, too, that forced marriages at times have protected women, and their children, “from abandonment and destitution.” She looks at the pros and cons of intermarriage. A white man marrying a Native American woman could gain rights to tribal resources; for a Native woman, intermarriage could mean access to valuable government benefits. Because of spousal privilege, some hasty marriages become an effective criminal defense strategy. In revealing the complex consequences of marrying, Zug concludes that marriage, at best, “is a Band-Aid that Americans have used when society is too sexist, too racist, or just too lazy to implement better solutions.”

A fresh, engaging social history.