SC lawmakers eye raising legal age to marry to 18
A South Carolina bill that would require brides and grooms to be legal adults to get married took its first steps in the state Senate Wednesday.
A bipartisan panel of lawmakers voted unanimously to advance the bill, which would raise the legal age to get married from 16 to 18 across the state. The bill would allow no exceptions, including if a 16 or 17 year old girl was pregnant.
Under current South Carolina law, 16 or 17-year-olds can get married if they have permission from their parents or guardians. If a girl is pregnant, the father of the child can get married without parental permission, but the girl still needs permission from her parents, according to the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center.
Between 2000 and 2018, 5,433 underage teens got married in South Carolina, said Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, the bill’s sponsor.
Hutto, D-Orangeburg, called the idea of letting 16- and 17-year-olds get married “antiquated.”
“We don’t let people under 18 get a credit card, open a bank account,” Hutto said. “They’re not adults.”
He added that he doesn’t think teens who get pregnant need to get married to parent effectively, which is the underlying reasoning behind the current law, he said.
“Obviously, if a child gets pregnant at 16 or 17 and the male wants to be a father, they can go through family court and do that now,” Hutto said, referring to the way a teen father can gain parental rights. “We don’t need to go through the idea they need to get married to parent.”
Hutto said teens who get married before adulthood are less likely to return to school. They also face poorer outcomes such as higher levels of divorce and higher chances of ending up in poverty.
Ann Warner, the CEO of the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network, testified that 16 and 17-year-olds getting married are also at high risk for becoming victims of domestic violence, especially in South Carolina, which consistently ranks as one of the states with the highest rates of interrelationship violence.
Warner called raising the age requirement for marriage the “strongest, simplest, most effective way,” to mitigate the consequences of teenagers getting married at a very young age.
This isn’t the first time lawmakers have considered raising the age to get married in South Carolina.
In 2019, South Carolina passed a law to ban children under the age of 16 from getting married. Previously, South Carolina law allowed girls of any age to get married if they were pregnant, resulting in thousands of children getting married across the state.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 11:20 AM.
