A marriage of convenience is contracted for reasons other than that of relationship of love. Instead, such a marriage is entered into for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. Some cases in which those married do not intend to live together as a couple, typically marry only for one of them to gain the right to reside in a country. In many cultures it is usual for parents to decide their adult children's marriages; this is called arranged marriage. A marriage of convenience that is neither a sham marriage entered into for fraudulent purposes or a forced marriage is not against the law.
Marriages of convenience are often contracted to exploit legal loopholes of various sorts. A couple may wed for one of them to gain citizenship or right of abode, for example, as many countries around the world will grant such rights to anyone married to a resident citizen. In the United States, this practice is known as a green card marriage. In Australia, there have been marriages of convenience to bring attention to the government's Youth Allowancelaws. On 31 March 2010 two students were publicly and legally married on the University of Adelaide's lawn so that they could both receive full Youth Allowance. Because they exploit legal loopholes, sham marriages of convenience often have legal consequences. For example, U.S. Immigration can punish this with a US$250,000 fine and five-year prison sentence.
Homosexuality
Another common reason for marriages of convenience is to hide one partner's homosexuality in places where being openly gay is punishable or potentially detrimental. A sham marriage of this type, sometimes called a lavender marriage, is intended to hide the appearance of homosexuality. Such marriages may have one heterosexual and one gay partner, or two gay partners: a lesbian and a gay man married to each other. In the case where a gay man marries a woman, the woman is said to be his "beard". In recent years, such marriages are conducted to make a political point about the absence of marriage equality in a particular country.
The phrase "marriage of convenience" has also been generalized to mean any partnership between groups or individuals for their mutual benefit, or between groups or individuals otherwise unsuited to working together. An example would be a "national unity government", as existed in Israel during much of the 1980s or in Great Britain during World War II. More specifically, cohabitation refers to a political situation which can occur in countries with a semi-presidential system, where the president and the prime minister belong to opposed political camps.
Political marriage
Marriages of convenience, often termed marriages of state, have always been commonplace in royal, aristocratic, and otherwise powerful families, to make alliances between two powerful houses. Examples include the marriages of Agnes of Courtenay, her daughter Sibylla, Jeanne d'Albret, and Catherine of Aragon.
