Legal jactitation

In English law

English law

English law is the legal system of England and Wales, and is the basis of common law legal systems used in most Commonwealth countries and the United States except Louisiana...

, jactitation is the maliciously boasting or giving out by one party that he or she is married

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 to the other.

In such a case, in order to prevent the common reputation of their marriage that might ensue, the procedure is by suit of jactitation of marriage, in which the petitioner alleges that the respondent boasts that he or she is married to the petitioner, and prays a declaration of nullity and a decree putting the respondent to perpetual silence thereafter. To the suit there are three defences:

1. denial of the boasting;
2. the truth of the representations;
3. allegation (by way of estoppel
   Estoppel
   Estoppel in its broadest sense is a legal term referring to a series of legal and equitable doctrines that preclude "a person from denying or asserting anything to the contrary of that which has, in contemplation of law, been established as the truth, either by the acts of judicial or legislative...
   
   ) that the petitioner acquiesced in the boasting of the respondent.

In Thompson v. Rourke, 1893, Prob. 70, the Court of Appeal laid down that the court will not make a decree in a jactitation suit in favour of a petitioner who has at any time acquiesced in the assertion of the respondent that they were actually married.

Prior to 1857 such a proceeding took place only in the Ecclesiastical Court, but by express terms of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857

Matrimonial Causes Act 1857

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 was an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act reformed the law on divorce, moving litigation from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts to the civil courts, establishing a model of marriage based on contract rather than...

 it could be brought in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court

High Court of Justice

The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...

. The right to petition for jactitation of marriage was abolished by Section 61 of the Family Law Act 1986.

In addition, this term may refer to acts such as slander of title

Slander of title

In law, slander of title is normally a claim involving real estate in which one entity falsely claims to own another entity's property. Alternatively, it is casting aspersion on someone else's property, business or goods, e.g. claiming a house is infested with termites , or falsely claiming you own...

 or other similar misrepresentations of the ownership of physical or intellectual property.

Physical jactitation

Jactitation is an archaic medical term (derived, perhaps as a corruption, from "jactation", meaning a restless tossing and turning of the body, and derived itself from Latin jactare or jacere, both meaning "to throw or hurl") referring to the involuntary spasm

Spasm

In medicine a spasm is a sudden, involuntary contraction of a muscle, a group of muscles, or a hollow organ, or a similarly sudden contraction of an orifice. It is sometimes accompanied by a sudden burst of pain, but is usually harmless and ceases after a few minutes...

 of a limb, muscle, or muscle group. This is sometimes seen in fever patients or other situations of physical distress, but may occur in healthy individuals in a hypnogogic

Hypnagogia

Hypnagogia is the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep , originally coined in adjectival form as "hypnagogic" by Alfred Maury....

state. This hypnagogic jactitation often occurs in the legs, and may occasion a short explanatory dream about stumbling or missing the bottom stair.