When a person married, that person became a spiritual member of the new spouse's family. This applied to brothers, cousins, etc. If a man wished to marry his late wife's first cousin, spiritually he would be marrying his own first cousin. This would require a dispensation for a second degree of affinity. Dispensations for affinity relationships wee governed by the same guidelines as blood relationships or consanguinity.
Dispensation play a major role in genealogy.
Dispensations are used by professional researchers in determining if indeed such and such ancestors were related to one another because of the dispensations being granted their children, etc. Top of this page Back to My French Acadian ancestors Page. Do not put in anything else including a signature block. Isle Madame History. Port Royal History.