A civil marriage, so far as its validity in law is concerned, is a civil contract between two persons, to which the consent of the parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential. A lawful civil marriage may be contracted only when a license has been obtained as provided by law and when the civil marriage is contracted in the presence of two witnesses and solemnized by one authorized, or whom one or both of the parties in good faith believe to be authorized, so to do. Marriages subsequent to April 26, 1941, not so contracted shall be null and void.
Minn. Stat. § 517.01
CIVIL MARRIAGE CONTRACT.
Applied in 16 court decisions — leading case Conaway v. Deane (2007)
Most recently applied in Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks v. Mayor Sylvester Turner and City of Houston (June 2017)
(8562) RL s 3552; 1941 c 459; 1977 c 441 s 1; 1978 c 772 s 1; 1997 c 203 art 10 s 1; 2013 c 74 s 2
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Minnesota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.