Civil marriage has undergone significant changes in the United States since the country's inception:

• 1830 - Right of married woman to own property in her own name (instead of all property being owned exclusively by the husband) in Mississippi.
• 1848 - Right of married women to own property in her own name in New York.
• 1854 - The Republican party referred in its platform to polygamy as one of the "twin relics of barbarism" (in addition to slavery). At the time, polygamy was a practice of some Mormons. See plural marriage.
• 1862 - The United States Congress enacted the Morrill Act, signed by Abraham Lincoln, which made bigamy a felony in the territories punishable by $500 or five years in prison.
• 1873 - Supreme Court rules that a state has the right to exclude a married woman from practicing law.
• 1874 - Congress passed the Poland Act , which transferred jurisdiction over Morrill Act cases to federal prosecutors and courts in Utah, which were not controlled by Mormons.
• 1879 - The Morrill Act was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in the case of Reynolds v. United States
• 1882 - Congress passed the Edmunds Act , which prohibited not just bigamy, which remained a felony, but also bigamous cohabitation, which was prosecuted as a misdemeanor, and did not require proof an actual marriage ceremony had taken place. The law also allowed polygamists to be held indefinitely without a trial.
• 1887 - Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act , which allowed prosecutors to force polygamist wives to testify against their husbands, and abolished the right of women in Utah to vote.
• 1890 - Mormons in Utah officially renounce polygamy.
• 1900 - All states now grant married women the right to own property in their own name.
• 1907 - All women acquired their husband's nationality upon any marriage occurring after that date.
• 1920 - Right of women to vote.
• 1933 - Married women granted right to citizenship independent of their husbands.
• 1965 - Supreme Court overturns laws prohibiting married couples from using contraception.
• 1967 - Supreme Court overturns laws prohibiting interracial couples from marrying (Loving v. Virginia).
• 1971 - Supreme Court upholds an Alabama law that automatically changed a woman's legal surname to that of her husband upon marriage.
• 1972 - Supreme Court overturns laws prohibiting unmarried couples from purchasing contraception.
• 1975 - Married women allowed to have credit in their own name.
• 1976 - Supreme Court overturns laws prohibiting abortions for married women without the consent of the husband.