Nevada lawmakers consider raising marriage age to 18 – Las Vegas Review-Journal

CARSON CITY — As Nevada lawmakers weigh an outright ban on marriage before age 18, data from the state’s two most populous counties show similarities among the very youngest marriage applicants, at least two of whom received court permission to marry at age 13.

No one that young has been issued a marriage license in the two counties, Clark and Washoe, since 2000. But 14-year-old girls have married as recently as 2011, and a 15-year-old girl was married as recently as last fall. Females comprise the overwhelming majority of the youngest marriage applicants in the two counties.

“I love him since I was nine years old,” one 14-year-old bride-to-be wrote of her 19-year-old betrothed, in a form where she listed her reasons for marrying.

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