Someone gets a Las Vegas quickie on a drunken whim, and that is more sacrosanct in the eyes of the law than two siblings who grew up together, or a mother and child? I don’t get this logic.
Siblings and major children have no special legal relationship beyond the emotional and possibly acting as next of kin in appropriate situations. Spouses do.
Yes, that is understood, but I’m guessing Slackerinc is asking why this is the case.
IOW, the personal relationship/s between sibs and parent/child are more likely to be stronger than the relationship between a married couple who do a quickie marriage after knowing each other for a few days (or hours!). Why does the law not acknowledge the family relationship/s of the former, whilst holding sacrosanct the married relationship?
Not so much a general question, would be interesting as a GD though!
The rationale I’ve always heard was that:
1.The temptation of perjury is so high as to render forced testimony against one’s spouse pointless, it will just be lies.
2.A person should be able to talk to and confide in their spouse without fear of it being used to hurt them as a matter of human dignity, you shouldn’t have to worry about confiding in your spouse or being made to testify against them as a matter of decency.
This law predates quickie Las Vegas marriages and easy no fault divorce by many centuries, so you really should view it in the proper context.
There’s an old line that “your spouse is the relative that you choose”; the fact that you choose to marry a spouse puts them in a special category by itself. Especially these days when divorce is legally easily available. Your siblings, parents, children are still going to be that even if they hate your guts; you can divorce a spouse that hates you, and you chose to marry them in the first place. So the fact that you married them and are still married them is a useful indication that they are emotionally close to you and are likely to look out for your interests.
There’s also the fact that we as a culture always stress the virtue of being loyal to and caring for your spouse, so turning around and saying “except now!” is likely to fail, as grude points out.
It also goes back to the Judeo-Christian idea in law that you and your spouse are “one” in the eyes of God. Therefore, testifying against a spouse is almost like testifying against yourself, i.e. a 5th amendment violation.
I don’t think it’s just Judeo-Christian. I think the idea that two married people are a single legal entity is really what marriage IS, across all kinds of cultures.
are parents and siblings expected to testify against each other?
I go with what Der Trihs said.
“Expected”? I dunno. But if they do testify, they’ll still be parents and siblings. Even in a worst-case scenario, they’ll be parents and siblings forever (even if they hate each other). But for spouses, the testimony might lead to them not being spouses any more.
My question, though, is not so much “why is this true for married people?”; but “why is it not true for siblings or parents and children?” Der Trihs takes a good run at it, although since siblings or parents/kids who dislike each other would still be allowed to testify against each other if they wished even if there were a legal right for them to refuse, I’m not sure it really answers the question.
They can legally be compelled to do so; the same is true for anyone except spouses.
Also, often spouses could be / used to be meal-tickets, which meant along with the emotional pressure to embellish was an economic incentive.
Even if the spouses (likely to soon be ex-spouses) hated each other, then the incentive to lie in the other direction could be a factor.
I think the general belief is that overall, the emotional and financial bonds are far stronger in general for spouses than for other relatives. Plus, whered oes it stop? Half brother? Step child? Adopted child? Grandparent/grandchild? The parents who gave you up for adoption?
Spousal relationships are (we hope) a simple, single specific legal relationship between only two people, whereas family relationships are complex and vary betwen close and remote.
Under English common law a husband and wife constituted a single legal person (that person being the husband). That may be derived from Christian beliefs about “becoming one flesh”, but it’s not universal. In Islam a husband & wife very much remain seperate people with their own property. So in a sense testifying against one’s spouse would be testifying against oneself. Also in the case of a woman it could put her in the position of having to violate natural law by going against her husband.
Also, privileges are a two-edged sword. ANY testimonial privilege comes at the expense of truth being discovered. Period. Since wives can’t testify against husbands, there is a piece of evidence available to the judge and jury that will never be heard, and possibly cause the truth of the matter never to be heard.
Enacting such a thing is not to be taken lightly. We agree that it is important enough to not force a person to testify against himself even if it means that the guilty person walks free. History has added the spousal exception and others to that. But when we consider parent/child, do we want to add yet ANOTHER truth-defying rule to the system? What about best friends or roommates?
What if the parent/child are estranged? Should there be a “love” test to see if a sufficient bond between parent/child exists before the privilege is adopted? I would vote against it because there simply isn’t a good rationale for it that is sufficient to frustrate the search for truth.
I was under the impression a wife or husband* could* testify, they just could not be *compelled *to testify?
State laws vary, but there are two different kinds of spousal privilege:
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Marital communications—usually privileged and prohibited even if the other spouse wants to testify.
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Marital observations—usually a spouse’s choice to testify.
Again, it varies by state (for example, in WV both are absolutely privileged and belong to the defendant, not the spouse) but the majority follows these lines.
Can minor children can be compelled to testify? This Massachusetts site says no (with some exceptions), but is that generally true? The wording sounds like children can’t testify even if they want to.
Another site says children over 18 can be compelled to testify (as of 15 years ago).
Can adult children be compelled to testify about matters that occurred when they were still minors? Does the defendant get a say?
It’s worth noting that unlike some here are claiming, this is not a universal principle common to all cultures, but a common law concept most typical in the US, so the reasons for this privilege’s existence should be searched in historical English and US legal tradition. Other legal traditions can be quite different. For example here in Finland also the parents, children and siblings, as well as some other close relatives, have to right to refuse to testify, according to the police:
It doesn’t apply in Spain, now or even under our more sexist laws. They form a new legal entity (a family) but do not become a single legal person for Civil Law purposes, much less for Criminal Law ones, these being the ones to which the “no obligation to declare against your spouse” applies. Judges are reluctant to call spouses or SOs to declare because they’re viewed as unreliable, but if one is called to declare they can’t refuse (well, they can, but it’s contempt).
There’s a little more to it than that - the law also reflects a public policy objective of preserving marital harmony. Its application has been amended over the years. I don’t know what the situation is in England now, but in Ireland one spouse is deemed competent to give evidence against the other, and can be compelled to give evidence in certain circumstances, such as where the alleged offence is one of child sexual abuse. This rule was adopted after a case where a creep who’d molested his daughter tried unsuccessfully to have his conviction thrown out on the basis that his wife’s evidence against him was inadmissible.
Much the same applies in Germany BTW. Privilege applies to spouses, ex-spouses, fiancé(e)s, civil partners, ex civil partners, antecendents, descendents, other relatives up to the 3rd degree, in-laws up to the 2nd degree.