In France, Women Marry Dead Men

You invest years in a man that says he wants to marry you, but never sets the date. Then he dies. What’s a girl to do? In France, you petition the President to marry your dead boyfriend. The most recent request for a “posthumous” marriage was filed by 21-year-old Caroline Monet, who is pregnant by murdered paratrooper, Abel Chennouf.

This practice seems not only archaic, it suggests that the woman NEEDS a marriage to legitimize the relationship. Is marriage so important to women that they marry a dead man? Also, women who want to engage in this practice first must beg, I mean ask for the President of France’s permission.

According to Wikipedia, “Posthumous marriage for civilians originated in the 1950s, when a dam broke and killed 400 people in Fréjus, France, including a man named André Capra, who was engaged to Iréne Jodart. Jodart pleaded with French President Charles De Gaulle to let her go along with her marriage plans even though her fiancé had died. She had support from the media and within months was allowed to marry her fiancé. It is likely that posthumous marriage was made as an extension to France’s Proxy Marriage.”

You might remember Fritz Pfeffer, the final hider in the annex with Anne Frank and her family. He and his girlfriend, Charlotte Kaletta, were forbidden to marry by Nuremberg Race Laws, Kaletta was a Catholic and Pfeffer a Jew (actually, I’m not sure the Catholic Church would have recognized Kaletta’s marriage to a divorced man, but that’s another story). After De Gaulle instituted the practice of posthumous marriage, Kaletta filed for one in 1953, eight years after Pfeffer’s death. It was granted.

The ceremony is said to be “moving.” I use quotation marks for the word because a woman is marrying a dead person (“moving” in the wrong direction). Death in itself is tragic, but the marriage allows for no ownership rights of the man’s possessions AND only women have filed for posthumous marriages, no men. Hmmmm….

The “moving” ceremony entails the woman standing next to the picture of their deceased boyfriend, often there is an empty chair representative of the dead person. ”

The Presiding official at the wedding will say “I did” instead of “I do” and the phrase “until death do us part” is not used. The mayor conducting the ceremony will read the Presidential decree instead of the deceased spouse’s marriage vows. The living participant does not usually put a ring on the corpse’s finger. 

Reasons for a posthumous marriage range from legitimizing children to emotional reasons.  The date of the marriage is put at the date of his death, yet there is considered to be no shared property between the couple.

IRONY ALERT: In France, marrying a dead person is legal, same-sex marriage is not.

CREEPY ALERT:”In 2004 a man in South Africa shot his fiancé and then himself during an argument. The two were later married because the families and friends wished to remember them as a happy couple.” (Where were her GIRLFRIENDS protesting such an absurdity?! Marrying the abusive man that killed her?!)

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