The State specifies certain conditions which must be complied with for the legal validity of a contract. Every lawyer is familiar with this phase of the matter. A man may have a just claim to a piece of property, but before he can sell it he must comply with the requirements of the law for the transfer of real estate. These requirements differ in different times and places. If a citizen gets title to a piece of property and the deed of transfer be legally defective, his title is in jeopardy.
Marriage is a contract.
Christ elevated the Christian marriage contract to the dignity of a sacrament but it remains essentially a contract. By the marriage ceremony the contracting parties mutually dispose of what is of most consequence to each, namely their own persons. The very nature of a contract requires that what one disposes of must be one's own, and that one must be free to dispose of it or to retain it. Many other things may and do enter into the validity of the marriage contract, but if either of these two factors be absent, there can be no contract. Another point, and this is the most important thing to understand with regard to the Marlborough case.