In France, You Can Legally Marry a Dead Person — With the President's Blessing

France's posthumous marriage law has roots stretching back to Napoleon's Code Civil of 1803, when proxy-style unions were permitted to protect widows of fallen soldiers and legitimise their children. The practice was revived and formalised during the First and Second World Wars for similar reasons. The modern civilian version of the law, however, was born out of tragedy: on December 2, 1959, the Malpasset Dam near Fréjus catastrophically collapsed, killing over 400 people — including men who were engaged to be married. One pregnant fiancée, Irène Jodart, petitioned President Charles de Gaulle to allow her to proceed with her marriage plans. Public sympathy was overwhelming, and within months, the French parliament inserted Article 23 into the dam-disaster compensation bill, which became Article 171 of the Civil Code. The law was originally designed to legitimise children born out of wedlock, as French law at the time treated 'legitimate' and 'natural' children unequally in inheritance. Today, between 60 and 100 applications are submitted annually, with roughly half approved. Notable recent cases include the 2017 posthumous marriage of Étienne Cardiles to police officer Xavier Jugelé (killed in a terrorist attack on the Champs-Élysées), and a 2023 case where a 64-year-old retiree married her partner of 40 years who had died in 2020. The ceremony is officiated by a local mayor, who reads the presidential decree; a photograph of the deceased typically stands in their place. The surviving spouse immediately becomes a widow or widower upon the marriage being declared.