I think the term you’re looking for is “betrothal.”
If you’ve read many novels set before, say, the 1930s, you’ve encountered references to “breach of promise” suits. E.g. – the hero’s family is plunged into chaos when he starts keeping company with a low-born woman, who then finagles him into what she represents as an implicit or explicit undertaking to marry her, whereupon she tries to sue or extort a large settlement when his family forbids the marriage.
Such suits were generally (I think) permissible at common law. However, they – along with actions for alienation of affections (i.e., suing your husband’s mistress) and the much-lamented, delightfully-denominated cause of action for jactitation of marriage, are generally held in considerable disfavor these days, and have been explicitly abrogated in many (most?) U.S. jurisdictions. The policy shift is perhaps motivated by a belief that the courts shouldn’t be interfering in private romantic entanglements (though you’d certainly not guess that from the burgeoning of sexual harrassment litigation). A more likely cause is the discomfort most self-styled progressives would feel with causes of action usually asserted by women and founded on the notion that a woman who lost an opportunity to marry was doomed to spinsterhood and poverty and thus deserved damages, or that otherwise relied upon “antiquated” notions of chastity, marital relations, etc.
So disfavored are these causes of action that some states have made it illegal even to threaten or file such a suit. See, e.g., Section 1904 of:
http://members.aol.com/StatutesPA/23.Cp.19.html
Bricker has cautioned better than I could regarding the distinction between civil damages actions and military disciplinary actions (or for that matter, between civil and criminal actions in general – I don’t think that even in the good old jactitation of marriage, common law days, this guy could ever have faced criminal sanction absent some economic benefit establishing fraud).
Interesting. It says:
And
Women’s anger. The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction.