1. The consequences of marriage

2. The marriage contract
As outlined earlier, marriage is a contract that confers on the parties a status of husband and wife, from this status arises a bundle of rights and obligations which by large are imposed by the law.
The Ampthill peerage Lord Simon of Glaisdale stated ‘Marriage is a status meaning ‘the condition of belonging to a class in society to which the law ascribes peculiar rights and duties, capacities and incapacities.’

3. Consequences of marriage
Doctrine of unity: once two people married they are considered to be one
Right to consortium

4. Doctrine of unity
This doctrine has biblical origins. Married people were considered to be one. The doctrine was by large discriminatory and entailed that a wife submitted her being to her husband without whom she had no personality.
Right to consortium origins
‘By marriage the husband and wife are one person in law; that is the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband ; under whose wing, protection and cover she performs everything; and is therefore called in our law-French a feme-covert....Upon this principle of a union of person in husband and wife, depend almost all the legal rights, duties, and disabilities that either of them acquire by the marriage.’ Per Blackstone commentaries i, 442
This doctrine justified a number of laws that were discriminatory against women, thus the doctrine has been done away with by large now with the development of women’s rights under international law, in particular CEDAW
To what extent is the doctrine of unity reiterated under Zambian law?

5. The right to consortium
The right to consortium derives from the status of husband and wife. It is also premised on the view that upon marriage two individuals become one
It is a bundle of rights imposed by the status of husband and wife.

6. Defining consortium
The term consortium is not subject to precise definition. It is an abstract notion which has been defined by Low and Douglas to meaning living together as husband and wife with all the incidences that flow from that status. Lowe and Douglas Bromley’s Family law
See also Kungl v. Schiefer (1960) 25 D.L.R. (2d) 344 per Schroeder J.A.
“The term 'consortium' is not susceptible of precise or complete definition but, broadly speaking, companionship, love, affection, comfort, mutual services, sexual intercourse – all belonging to the marriage state – taken together make up what we refer to as consortium.”

7. Incidents flowing from the status of husband
What the right to consortium entails:
Companionship?
Affection? Somange v Somange
Cohabitation?
Sexual intercourse?
Maintenance?
Use of Surname
Children of parties to the marriage
Mutual protection

8. What is the effect of breaching the right to consortium
If there is a duty to cohabit can this be enforced?
What about companionship and affection can any of these rights be enforced?

9. Loss of the right to consortium
The right to consortium may be lost in the following ways:
1. If the spouses agree to live apart;
2. Where a decree of judicial separation has been made
3. When a decree nisi (divorce or nullity) has been made and
4. Matrimonial conduct will deprive the spouse of the right to the others consortium

10. Can one sue a third party for loss of consortium?
Where a third party interferes with the right of a party to the marriage to consortium, the said party may sue the former for loss of consortium.
A husband or wife can bring an action for breach of contract or tort against a third party for damages for loss of consortium. For example if as a result of a breach of contractual duty loses his right to consortium he may recover damages for such loss where he shows that the loss was as a result of the defendant’s breach. In Jason Watson and Son the husband successfully sued for loss of his wife’s services where the wife died from food poisoning caused by the salmon which the defendant sold to the plaintiff.
Where a tort has been committed against a wife, the husband will also have a separate cause of action against the tortfeasor for loss of consortium.
See Howard and Company (Africa) Ltd v Behrens (1972) ZR 171 (HC)