What is the meaning of Concubinage? Concept, Definition of Concubinage

Definition, Concept, Meaning, What is Concubinage




1. Concept of concubinage

Concubinage is indeed stable union between persons of different sex (some States accept gay) to which the law in certain cases, and after some time, grants legal effects. They are people who live together making marital life but are not United in marriage. In some countries, fits this situation in a record as proof of the union. Where there is such registration, it should be tested with witnesses.
Concubinage was recognized by the Roman law because in this culture people of different social status could not be join in marriage. It should be púberes people and there were among them prohibitions to marriage, as the relatives be or already be married. For them the two elements containing the marriage: one in fact given by cohabitation and other spiritual who was called "affectio maritalis", concubinage only possessed the first.
With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire concubinage was losing its recognition as a legal institution, since it considered that you affected the institution of marriage which was a sacrament. Concubinage was banned in the 9th century.
Concubinage followed equally subsisting, and today are recognized various legal effects that vary according to countries, such as the possibility of being beneficiaries of life insurance, enjoy the social work of the partner and the right to a pension in the event of death of the partner, in all cases requiring a minimum time of coexistence, are reduced if the couple had procreated.

2 Meaning of concubinage

It is called as common-law marriage to the union of couple, sentimental, sexual, between two people, whether male-female, female­female, manly, and characterized because the union is given outside the framework of marriage.
This type of union is as old as humanity itself and also turns out to be very current, since in our days, it is common for couples to join in this way. Many of them never get married and there are others who first tested the union in this way and after some years or certain time decide to join together in marriage, i.e., give your relationship a more formal framework.
Although marriage generates that spouses have equal rights and obligations before the law, in many parts of the world, to be so extended the union of couples in common-law marriage, also, the couple is reached by a series of rights and obligations.
People who maintain a relationship of cohabitation, or are not married, are called concubines / us.
In antiquity and some current cultures of East, the figure of the concubine is very common. For example, men who had a leading economic position and power, in addition to his formal wife, also had a variety of concubines,
Usually these coming from a lower social class. This common-law union guaranteeing these women an improvement in their condition of life and also ensured their families a greater economic and social protection.
Moreover, in ancient Rome, it was called common-law that individual male who was chosen by his master to become his lover. Meanwhile, in the same culture, there was a concubine, who was the illegitimate woman, although in practice it enjoyed certain benefits with the exception of name and dignity which is attributed.
The marriage would be the other side of concubinage, since it is a union of formal couple, backed by civil law and by which the spouses shall enjoy benefits and rights.

3. Definition of concubinage

Concubinage is a term that comes from the latin concubinātus which refers to the marital relationship that keeps a partner without being married. He is known to the members of these couples as common-law spouses although, in certain cultures, the concubine was a woman of lesser status than men in a marriage type relationship.
For example: "Marta and I live in concubinage since we do not believe in marriage", "the cohabitation of the actress and the footballer ended amid a scandal", "Ezekiel suggested me a cohabitation, but I told him that I would only go to live with him if we got married by Church".
The concept of common-law marriage goes back to ancient Rome and Biblical times. In general, cohabitation was voluntary (either by an agreement between the man and the woman or man and the family of the woman) since it was considered that this relationship brought economic security to women. There was, anyway, the servile concubinage which involved sexual slavery of women.
In the Roman Empire and the ancient China, concubinage had a legal status than marriage. This means that a man might have a wife and a concubine simultaneously. Western laws, on the other hand, could only admit monogamous marriage and leaving the concubine out of any legal protection.
Today, on the other hand, concubinage is associated to a partner that coexist in a stable way and that a relationship analogous to marriage or conjugal. For this reason, many States have included these couples within a legal framework to prevent the desertion of some of its members in case of illness or death.