Levirate marriage is a marriage custom in which a widow is expected to marry a brother, or a person socially classified as a brother, of her deceased husband, with the purpose of preserving the deceased husband's lineage and providing the widow and her children continued economic support within her late husband's family. The term derives from the Latin levir, meaning 'husband's brother,' and is unrelated etymologically to the biblical books of Leviticus. The custom is documented across societies with strong clan or lineage structures, including several Kenyan, Nigerian, South Sudanese and Zimbabwean peoples, and ancient Israelite society (codified in Deuteronomy 25:5-10). In recent decades, especially 'widow inheritance' practices in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the custom has become the subject of significant public-health and human-rights debate. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Descent RuleA widow is expected to marry a brother, or classificatory brother, of her deceased husband, keeping her and any children within, and continuing the lineage of, her late husband's kin group; this marriage-succession custom typically operates within societies that are themselves patrilineal. 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountThis is a marriage-succession custom governing remarriage obligations within a lineage rather than a rule for tracing descent across generations; recorded here as the closest fit to the schema's descent-rule field. Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountParts of sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia), some Central Asian peoples (historically Kyrgyz, Kurds, Scythians, Xiongnu), parts of East and South Asia, and ancient Israelite society; the practice has declined substantially in most regions in modern times. 1 Descent Rule
Descent Rule (category)Sourced to the subject's own account FAQs
What is the difference between levirate and sororate marriage?
Levirate marriage has a widower's brother marry his widow to keep her within the late husband's lineage; sororate marriage is the mirror case, a husband marrying his deceased or infertile wife's sister to keep the marriage alliance between the two families intact.
Levirate marriage is a custom in which a widow is expected to marry a brother, or a person socially classified as a brother, of her deceased husband, so that she and any children remain within, and continue the lineage of, her late husband's kin group; it typically operates within societies that are themselves patrilineal, and is documented across parts of sub-Saharan Africa, some Central Asian peoples, and ancient Israelite society. Sororate marriage is the corresponding custom in the other direction: a husband marries or takes as partner his wife's sister, typically after his wife's death or if she has proven infertile, which anthropologists read as a way of preserving the marriage alliance between the two families rather than dissolving it. The two customs are named as each other's counterparts precisely because both keep an existing marriage alliance between two kin groups alive after one spouse is lost, rather than letting the tie between the families lapse.
Connections
Associated With
Ghost marriage, documented among the Nuer and Dinka, and levirate marriage both use a kinsman to continue a dead man legal line, differing in whether the deceased or his living brother is named as the legal husband.
Levirate marriage is a marriage-succession custom operating within the broader institution of marriage.
Source Wikipedia: Marriage
Held Differently
Paired customs for replacing a deceased or unavailable spouse with their sibling: sororate replaces a wife with her sister, levirate replaces a husband with his brother.
In Rule Category
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Levirate Marriage
Rule Category Of
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Levirate Marriage
Wikipedia- Etymology and Background sections
- Background section
- Geographic documentation sections
- Background section, African context
- Etymology section
View the Source Wikipedia: Marriage
Open Questions (1 open question)
Is levirate marriage (widow inheritance) best understood as a protective custom securing a widow's economic and social standing, or as a practice that can override her own choice and has been directly implicated in HIV transmission in high-prevalence regions?
African public-health and human-rights scholarship is divided: some researchers and communities frame the custom as protection, ensuring a widow and her children retain a male provider within her late husband's kin group, while public-health literature and some African civil-society groups document it as coercive in practice and link it to elevated HIV transmission risk between the inheritor and his co-wives.
What would resolve this Longitudinal, consent-focused fieldwork tracking whether widows in a given community experience the custom as chosen protection or imposed obligation, cross-referenced against regional HIV incidence data controlling for other transmission factors.
Public health anthropologyWikipedia: Levirate Marriage
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.