Levirate marriage
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Levirate marriage is the practice of a woman marrying one of her husband's brothers after her husband's death, if there were no children, in order to continue the line of the death husband. Levirate marriage has been practiced by societies with a strong clan structure in which exogamous marriage outside the clan was forbidden. Groups that have practiced levirate marriage include the Punjabis and Jats, Israelites, the Xiongnu, the Mongols, and the Tibetans. (For the view of levirate marriage in Judaism, see Yibbum.) In some cultures, there is a feeling that the widow "owes" her in-laws a child in return for a bride price.
The practice was discontinued by the Western Jewish community in the Middle ages, a decision which was extended to most of the Jewish world in the early 1950s. This practice of marriage has also been practiced by many central and southern African peoples and is, to a certain degree, still in practice. In countries like South Africa, the obligation to do levirate marriage is on the decline due to the increased influence of Western's women's rights.
The term levirate is a derivative of the Latin word levir, meaning 'husband's brother.'
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