Hawaii Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

A written monarchy that became an American territory

Hawaii's law begins with the Hawaiian kingdom. Before written law, the Hawaiian people lived under the kapu system — a body of sacred prohibitions enforced by chiefly authority — and land was held communally. Kamehameha I unified the islands by about 1810.

Written law arrived with the constitutional monarchy: a Declaration of Rights in 1839, the Kingdom's first constitution in 1840, and further constitutions in 1852, 1864, and 1887, with the Republic adopting its own in 1894. Much of it was drafted with the help of American Protestant missionaries and American-trained jurists, on New England models, while the private law increasingly followed the English common law. The three eras a researcher meets in the records are the Kingdom, to 1893; the Provisional Government and Republic, 1893 to 1900; and the Territory of Hawaii, 1900 to statehood in 1959. The country basis is therefore layered: Hawaiian custom at the base, American models over it, and English common law adopted wholesale near the end of the Kingdom.

The common law, adopted in 1892

By an act of 1892 the Kingdom declared the common law of England — as expressed in English and American court decisions — to be the law of Hawaii, except where a Hawaiian statute, a Hawaiian judicial precedent, or an established Hawaiian usage governed instead.¹ After 1892, then, a private-law question was answered by the English common law unless a Hawaiian statute had changed it, and a claim resting on Hawaiian custom had to trace that usage to a practice already fixed before the act. Before 1892 the courts enforced customary claims only where a statute preserved them.²

Common law, not community property

For husband and wife, Hawaii followed the common law of separate property. From 1846 the rule was coverture — the common-law rule that merged a wife's legal identity into her husband's during marriage. The rule came in with the Second Act of Kamehameha III in 1846 and the Civil Code of 1859 restated it almost word for word: a married woman was "deemed for all civil purposes, to be merged in her husband, and civilly dead," her husband taking her movable property and managing her land. The rule reached the courtroom as well as the deed: a married woman could not sue or be sued without her husband joined in the suit, she was never liable to imprisonment in a civil action, and he answered in damages for her wrongs — so a case touching a wife before 1888 names the husband as a party.³ Coverture was dismantled by the Married Women's Property Act of 1888, which let a married woman hold and deal with property in her own right.⁴ For a brief span at the very end of the period covered here, Hawaii ran a statutory community-property system. Act 273 of 1945 took effect on its approval, 22 May 1945, and was repealed effective 30 June 1949. While it ran, what each spouse brought to the marriage stayed separate, along with anything later taken by gift, devise, bequest, or descent; but the earnings of both spouses, and even the income of their separate property, fell into a community in which each held an equal undivided half. The Act reached forward only, so a right that had accrued before 22 May 1945 kept its old character.⁵ Before 1945 and after 1949 the separate-property, common-law rule governed.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty for men, eighteen for women

Full legal age in Hawaii differed by sex. The Civil Code of 1859 provided that males reached majority at twenty and females at eighteen.⁶ Anyone below those ages was a minor. The female age was raised to twenty, matching the male age, by an amendment of 1919, and both were lowered to eighteen in 1971–72, after the period covered here.⁶ So a man born in 1875 came of age in 1895 at twenty; a woman born in 1875 came of age in 1893 at eighteen. These are the ages that govern the other milestones tied to "full age" below — the age to make a will, and the age to serve as executor.

A minor's capacity

A minor could own property outright at any age. What the law restrained was the power to give it away: a contract or a deed made by a minor was voidable (good until the minor chose to undo it), and could be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after the minor reached majority.⁷ A minor's land was therefore ordinarily sold not by the child but by a guardian, under an order of the probate court.

Marriage

Who could marry, and with whose consent

A valid Hawaiian marriage required the parties to meet a minimum age; to be outside the fourth degree of consanguinity (blood kinship); to have no living husband or wife; and to hold a license obtained from the agent appointed to grant them.⁸ These ages, and the fourth-degree and license rules, were set by statute — they were not left to the common law.

The marrying ages and the consent ages moved separately, and the consent ages were tied to majority rather than to the marrying ages:

So a bride of 15 in 1880 married lawfully but needed her parent’s consent; a groom of 21 needed none. From 1939 a girl who had turned 15 but not 16 could still marry, on the written approval of the circuit judge with juvenile jurisdiction where she lived. The consent was written — given under oath from 1929 — by the parent, guardian, or other person having charge of the minor, and an application to marry by a young party should carry it in the license file.

A ceremony was required

A valid Hawaiian marriage required a ceremony. The marriage rite was performed by a person authorized by law, on presentation of the license, and a couple became married by that ceremony alone.¹¹ Every officiant had to keep a record of each marriage and deliver a signed certificate to the couple.¹² The evidence of a Hawaiian marriage is therefore a license and a return filed by the officiant.

Restrictions on marriage

A marriage was void if the parties were within the fourth degree of consanguinity or if one party already had a living spouse.⁸ Marriages valid in the country where they were contracted were recognized in Hawaii.¹³ The Territory named the forbidden degrees instead of counting them — ancestor and descendant, brother and sister of the half blood as well as the whole, uncle and niece, aunt and nephew — and added that neither party could have a living spouse, be physically incapable of marriage, be acting under force, duress, or fraud, or conceal leprosy or another grave disease from the other.⁹

The age, kinship, and license rules applied to all parties alike, whatever their race: any two people who met them could marry.¹⁴ Marriages between Native Hawaiians, haole (white residents), and the Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Filipino immigrants who came to work the plantations were entered in the ordinary marriage register, in a single series.

Property Ownership

From communal tenure to private title

Before 1848 no one, chief or commoner, held land as private property. The mōʻī (paramount ruler) held all land; through the konohiki he allotted the use of it to lesser chiefs and to the makaʻāinana who lived on and cultivated it, in exchange for labor and a share of the crop.¹⁵ Turning that communal tenure into private title took three connected steps, and each left a record.

The Great Māhele of 1848 was the division of interests: between late January and early March 1848 the King and some 245 chiefs and konohiki signed the Māhele Book, separating the King's lands from the chiefs' lands and from the lands set aside for the government.¹⁶ The division did not by itself give anyone a title a court would recognize; it sorted out who could claim what.

The Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles — the Land Commission, established in 1845 — heard the claims and issued Land Commission Awards; a claimant perfected an award into full ownership by paying a commutation to the government and receiving a Royal Patent.¹⁷ The claim, the native and neighbor testimony taken to prove it (often in Hawaiian), the survey, the award, and the patent place a named person on a named parcel, with witnesses.

The Kuleana Act of 6 August 1850 granted fee-simple title to the common people for the taro patches and house lots they actually occupied and cultivated.¹⁸ A tenant's parcel (his kuleana) could not include more than a quarter-acre house lot, and a grant of kalo ground reached only what he had really cultivated, not scattered patches or waste land. The act reserved to the native tenants a continuing right to take firewood, house timber, aho cord, thatch, and ti leaf from the land they lived on for their own use, to drinking and running water, and to a way across the surrounding land. As first passed those rights carried a condition — the tenant had to inform the landlord or his agent and proceed with his consent — and an amending act approved 11 July 1851 struck the condition out, reciting that konohiki had been using it to forbid tenants the benefits the law had given them.¹⁹ A separate route ran through § 4, which set apart government land on each island in lots of one to fifty acres, at a minimum of fifty cents an acre, for natives not otherwise supplied with land.¹⁸ Relatively few of the eligible makaʻāinana obtained awards, and only a small fraction of the Kingdom's land passed into commoners' hands.

Who could own land

Once fee-simple title existed, the right to acquire and hold land belonged to men without regard to rank: a former konohiki chief and a makaʻāinana who received a kuleana held their patents on the same legal footing. Foreigners gained the right a little later, and by stages. Under the Second Act of Kamehameha III a domiciled alien could already inherit and pass on an estate in land, but only one less than fee simple — a leasehold, not an allodial title — and he first had to obtain a Certificate of Nationality from the Minister of the Interior on production of a certified passport. An act of 10 July 1850 abolished the disability of aliens to acquire and convey land in fee simple. A resident foreigner could now hold fee-simple land and pass it on by sale, gift, exchange, or will — though only to a Hawaiian subject or to another resident foreigner, and only on terms that any dispute over his title went to the kingdom’s own courts, on pain of losing the land to the government. For the first four years the right came with a catch: a deed of fee-simple land to an alien was void unless it carried a clause submitting the land to forfeiture and escheat, and that requirement was repealed only on 28 June 1854, with two months allowed for objections founded on its omission. A deed to a foreigner between July 1850 and June 1854 is worth reading for that clause.²⁰ In the Territorial period, federal naturalization law — which barred many Asian immigrants from citizenship as "aliens ineligible to citizenship" — reached their voting, jury service, and naturalization, but the 1850 act's opening of landholding to resident aliens remained the baseline.

Women and land, and the wife's signature

A single woman or widow — a feme sole (woman alone) — could own, buy, sell, and mortgage land exactly as a man could. A married woman's position turned on the date of her marriage and on the 1888 statute.

Before the Married Women's Property Act of 1888, a wife lived under coverture. Her husband took her personal property and managed her land, drawing its rents and profits, and he could convey her land only with her written consent; but the land itself remained hers and descended to her heirs at her death, and she could even dispose of it by will.²¹ A deed she signed alone was a different matter: without her husband joining in it, her conveyance was void and passed nothing, and his death years later did not make it good.²¹ A married woman's solo deed in a Hawaiian chain of title before 1888 therefore did not move the title, which is why such parcels resurface in ejectment suits a generation later. The Act of 1888 ended the merger and let a married woman hold and convey her property in her own name.⁴

The wife's signature on the husband's deed is a dating tool, and it turns on dower. Hawaiian dower, in force from 1846, attached to every parcel the husband owned at any time during the marriage (see Inheritance, below), so to give a buyer a title free of the wife's future dower claim, the husband needed her to join the deed and release her dower.²² The release was not effective unless the wife acknowledged it apart from her husband — Hawaii's version of the private examination used on the mainland.²³ A husband's deed signed by him alone did not cut off the wife's dower except in the one case the statute carved out: a mortgage given to secure the purchase money of the very land being bought, against which no dower attached even if the wife had not signed.²⁴ After the 1888 Act — and during the 1945–1949 community-property window — dower reached only the husband's separate property.²⁵

Which children could own land, and witnessing a deed

A child could hold land at any age, by inheritance, gift, or purchase; conveying it meant waiting until majority, because a minor's deed was voidable and disaffirmable then.⁷ A minor's land was in practice sold through a guardian under a probate order.

Hawaii's deed system turned on acknowledgment rather than on a fixed number of witnesses. To be recorded, a conveyance had to be acknowledged by the party who signed it, before the Registrar of Conveyances, a notary, or a judge; if the grantor had not acknowledged it, the deed could still be recorded on the proof of a subscribing witness before a judge, and if the witnesses were dead, by proof of the handwriting.²⁶ Recording is what made the deed good against a later purchaser.²⁷ A witness qualified on competency, not age; in practice witnesses were adults, because a witness might be called years later to prove the deed.

Native Hawaiian land rights

The kuleana grants and their reserved rights — to water, to gathering, and to access across the surrounding lands — were the property protections written for the makaʻāinana in 1850, and they generated their own claim and testimony records within the Land Commission files.¹⁹ Because so much land passed out of Native Hawaiian hands in the decades that followed — through the auction of government lands, unclaimed kuleana, and later quiet-title and adverse-possession suits — the Land Commission Award and Royal Patent records are often the last place a family's original landholding is documented.

Inheritance

Land and personalty descend together

In Hawaii land and movable property passed under a single rule of descent.²⁸ When a person died without a will (intestate), the Civil Code of 1859 divided the whole estate among the heirs.²⁹

The estate went to the nearest surviving relatives in a fixed order, and the scheme was symmetrical — a husband stood exactly where a widow would:³⁰

The widow's protection: dower

Where there were children, the widow's protection was not a fixed slice of the descent estate but her dower, which had two parts that worked differently.

In her husband's land she took the use of one-third for her lifetime, with ownership passing to the heirs; in his money and movables she took an outright third of what remained after his debts.³¹ While her dower in the land was unassigned she could occupy it or take a third of the rents, and she could remain in the family house.³² Dower was barred by the wife's misconduct.³³ Between 22 May 1945 and 30 June 1949 dower and curtesy stopped at the edge of the community: neither spouse's statutory interest reached the other's half of community property. An estate opened in those four years was settled in two parts — the probate judge decided what was community and what was separate, the survivor kept her own half outright, and only the decedent's half passed by his will or to his heirs. Debts and administration expenses paid out of the community were charged equally against both halves, though death taxes on the decedent's share were not charged against the survivor's.²⁵ The husband's mirror-image right, curtesy (a widower's life estate in his late wife's land), was likewise recognized.³⁴ After the 1888 Act, dower and curtesy reached only separate property.²⁵

Minors, guardians, and the age of choice

A minor inherited immediately, but the inheritance was managed by a guardian under the supervision of the probate court. The guardian gave a bond, made an inventory, accounted within the first year and afterward, and paid over the estate at the end.³⁵ A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property — most tellingly when a child inherited from someone other than a living father, which is exactly the situation that throws off a guardianship file naming the family.

The age of the ward controlled who chose the guardian, and that age moved once. Under the Civil Code the line was thirteen: for a minor under thirteen the probate judge appointed the guardian, while a minor over thirteen could nominate his own, subject to the judge’s approval. In 1913 the line rose to sixteen, on the same terms.³⁶ A guardianship record in which the child does the choosing is therefore evidence the child had passed thirteen before 1913, and sixteen from 1913 on. Guardianship ended at twenty, whatever the ward's sex, and the guardian's final settlement — filed when the ward came of age — dates the ward's majority and approximates a birth year, one of the most useful documents in Hawaiian probate.³⁷ Through it all, the father (and after him the mother) remained the natural guardian of the child's person and education, so the guardian of the estate was often a different person; and a father could name a testamentary guardian by his will.³⁸

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage was a bastard at law and could not inherit from the father, but inherited from the mother as though born in wedlock.³⁹ There was a route to the father's line: a child born out of wedlock was made legitimate by the later marriage of its parents to each other, and a legitimated child inherited accordingly.⁴⁰ A contested paternity was determined in a bastardy (support) proceeding against the reputed father, and that file names him.

Wills, executors, and witnesses

The age to make a will was twenty for a man and eighteen for a woman under the Civil Code, and twenty for everyone from 1890; it reached real and personal property alike.⁴¹ A married woman could dispose of her own property by will.⁴²

A valid will had to be in writing, signed by the testator (or by another in his presence and at his direction), and attested by two or more competent witnesses who subscribed their names in the testator's presence.⁴³ Under the 1859 code every will took that one form: written, signed, and subscribed by two competent witnesses. A gift to a subscribing witness was void unless there were two other competent witnesses to the will, which left the interested witness competent to prove it while defeating the gift; a witness who would have inherited had there been no will kept that much of the gift.⁴⁴ Two revocation rules relocate or void a will: a later marriage together with the birth of a child revoked a prior will,⁴⁵ and an unmarried woman's will was revoked by her subsequent marriage.⁴⁶ No will could be proved more than five years after the testator's death, with an allowance where a minor was interested.⁴⁷

The Civil Code fixed no special age for an executor. An executor had to be capable of accepting the trust and of giving the probate bond, which in practice meant a person of full age; where a will named a minor, the court committed the administration to a competent adult until he came of age. Territorial law kept the same silence on age. From 1943 it required instead that an executor, administrator, or guardian appointed by a Hawaii court be either a person living in the Territory or a trust company organized under its laws, with anyone already serving left undisturbed. From 1888 a married woman could serve as executrix, administratrix, guardian, or trustee, and bind the estate she represented without her husband's assent.⁴⁸

Taxation

The Kingdom's taxes

The first written tax law, of 27 December 1826, was paid in goods before there was a cash economy: each man owed his konohiki half a picul of sandalwood or four Spanish dollars, and each woman a mat or one dollar.⁴⁹ The Constitution of 1840 placed three taxes on the people under the King's direction — a poll tax (a flat head tax on the person), a land tax, and a labor tax of three days' work each month, which could be commuted to money — and land forfeited for unpaid taxes reverted to the King. The early poll tax fell on far more people than the later one. Under the tax act of 1842 a man owed a dollar, a woman half a dollar, a boy a quarter and a girl an eighth, the ratio running to adults and to children above fourteen, with feeble old men and women exempt altogether. It was payable in money in October, November, and December, or in arrow root at thirty-three pounds to the dollar, cotton at sixteen, sugar, or nets; a man who had paid nothing by the end of December was fined two dollars, and lesser taxes drew proportionate fines. The land tax was reckoned on farms and paid in swine measured by length — a fathom, three cubits, or a yard — or in money at ten, seven and a half, or five dollars, and land whose tax went unpaid could be taken from whichever of landlord or tenant was at fault.⁵⁰ A tax list from the 1840s or 1850s therefore names women and older children, where an 1880s list names only men.

By the internal-tax law compiled in the 1880s, four taxes fell on the individual, each with its own age bracket:⁵¹

Dogs were taxed a dollar, and carts, carriages, and wagons by the vehicle. Exemption from the poll, school, and road taxes ran to the infirm, the poor, and students. Occupation had bought exemption earlier, but from 1 January 1855 no one was exempt from a government tax for being a clergyman, a missionary, a missionary's servant, a school inspector, a trustee, or a constable, and soldiers not certified as having served in the previous year became liable to the school tax.⁵¹

Read the brackets as a rough life-course: a man entered the poll and road lists at 17 and the school list at 20, dropped off the road list at 50, and left the poll and school lists at 60 — or earlier, by an assessor's exemption. Because the poll tax reached men who owned nothing, these lists name men no property roll would catch.

The Territorial taxes

Under the Territory the mainstays were the real and personal property taxes. A net income tax was added in 1901, at two percent on individual income over $1,000 and on corporate net profits.⁵² The poll tax, which by then had absorbed the school and road taxes, was reset in 1932 as a five-dollar tax on employees and was abolished in 1943; a separate tax on wages, salaries, and dividends was enacted for relief funds in 1933, and the personal property tax was abolished in 1947.⁵³

The poll tax was never a qualification to vote, so its rolls track residence and employment rather than the franchise.

Courts

Jury service

In the Kingdom and the Republic, juries were drawn along lines of nationality. Separate lists of native and foreign jurors were kept; a native was tried by a jury of natives and a foreigner by a jury of foreigners, and where one party was Hawaiian and the other a foreigner the case went to a mixed jury drawn half from each list.⁵⁴

Annexation changed the rule. The Organic Act of 1900 abolished the race- and nationality-based jury laws and provided that juries would be constituted without reference to race or place of nativity — but it limited jurors to United States citizens, twenty-one years of age, literate in English.⁵⁵ The citizenship-and-English requirement had a sharp effect on the Territory's large immigrant population: the many Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino residents barred from naturalization by federal law as "aliens ineligible to citizenship" could not sit, whatever their standing in the community. Women were not eligible for jury service in Hawaii at any point through 1950; as of 1948 a juror still had to be a male citizen of twenty-one or over.⁵⁶

Criminal responsibility

Hawaii fixed the age of criminal responsibility by statute:⁵⁷

In the middle band the child's capacity was an open question of fact, decided on the evidence of the particular child's intelligence and understanding, with the burden resting on neither side.

Witnesses

A witness of any age could testify who understood the obligation of an oath and could relate what he or she had seen. The judge examined a child personally before receiving the testimony, and the weight of a young child's word was a matter for the court rather than a bar to competency.⁵⁸ Hawaii's law of evidence turned competency on understanding and interest, so women were competent witnesses throughout the period and a person of any race could testify. Jury service was the narrower door: after 1900 the Organic Act itself confined it to male United States citizens of twenty-one who could speak, read, and write English, which left out most first-generation Asian immigrants and every woman, though a woman remained a competent witness.⁵⁹

(Guide compiled by Jeniann Nielsen with AI assistance from Claude Opus 4.8 and Gemini Pro 3.1. Check primary sources as needed.)

Sources & Where to Verify

Every rule above is tagged with the law it rests on. The entries below show where to read those laws in full, so anything here can be checked against the original.

Constitutions

• Hawaii. Constitutions of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1840, 1852, 1864, and 1887; with the Declaration of Rights, 1839. The Constitution of 1840 sets out the poll, land, and labor taxes. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org.
• Republic of Hawaii. Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, 1894. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org.
• United States. Hawaiian Organic Act, Act of 30 April 1900, ch. 339, 31 Stat. 141. Section 4 governs citizenship and section 83 the constitution of juries. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/us_stat_31.

Codes and Compilations

• Hawaii. The Civil Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed in the Year of Our Lord 1859. Honolulu: Printed for the Government, 1859. The essential Kingdom volume; the section numbers used throughout this guide are its numbers. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog.
• Hawaii. Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884. The Civil Code of 1859 as amended through 1884, retaining its section numbers, with later acts reprinted in place. Reprints the later acts in place, including the marriage act of 1872, ch. XXIII. Digital images, by title. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/.
• Hawaii. The Penal Code of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Compiled from the Penal Code of 1850 and the Various Penal Enactments Since Made. Honolulu, Oahu: Printed at the Govt. Press, 1869. The source of the age-of-criminal-responsibility rule. Digital images. Hawaiian Kingdom. https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/pdf/Penal_Code.pdf.
• Hawaii. The Penal Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, 1897: Compiled from the Penal Code of 1869 and the Session Laws of 1870 to 1896 Inclusive. Honolulu: Hawaiian Gazette Print, 1897. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00hawagoog.
• Hawaii. Revised Laws of Hawaii. Honolulu, T.H.: Hawaiian Gazette, 1905; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Ltd., 1915 and 1925; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1935 and 1945. The codes in force for the Territorial decades. The 1945 edition, published by authority and stating the law as of 1 January 1945, is the volume behind every Territorial section cited here; its title page confirms the imprint. Digital images. Google Books. Catalog record. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011606226.

Session Laws and Land Records

• Hawaii. Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1851. Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1851. Carries the amendment to the Kuleana Act at pp. 98–99.
• Hawaii. Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854. Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854. Carries the dissolution of the Land Commission at p. 21, the amendment of the alien land act at p. 15, and the repeal of the tax exemptions at p. 34. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1930.
• Hawaii. Laws of the Territory of Hawaii Passed by the Twenty-Third Legislature, Regular Session, 1945. Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1945. Published by authority under the direction of the Secretary of Hawaii; carries the Community Property Act as Act 273, series D-201.
• Hawaii. Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives on the 21st of June, A.D. 1850, to which are Appended the Other Acts Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives during their General Session for 1850. Honolulu: Printed by H.M. Whitney, Govt. Press, 1850. The 1850 session laws follow the code: the alien land act at pp. 146–147 and the Kuleana Act at pp. 202–204. Imprint from the catalog record. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00unkngoog.
• Hawaii. Session Laws of Hawaii. Honolulu, 1903–1951. The Territorial marriage acts read for this guide: Act 28 (1903) and Act 42 (1907), re-enacting the ages of seventeen and fourteen; Act 8 (1913), raising them to eighteen and fifteen; Act 104 (1929), setting parental consent at twenty for both sexes; Act 59 (1937), raising the female age to sixteen; and Act 122 (1939), permitting a female of fifteen to marry on a judge’s written approval. Also Act 10 (1913), raising to sixteen the age at which a minor could nominate his own guardian, and Act 182 (1943), requiring an executor, administrator, or guardian to reside in the Territory. The 1951 volume (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Limited, 1951) carries cumulative notes for 1945, 1947, 1949, and 1951, and is the source for the disposition of the Community Property Act by Act 242 of 1949. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws.
• Hawaii. Session Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the Republic, and the Territory. The marriage act of 1872 is reprinted in the Compiled Laws of 1884; the chapters of the 1888 and 1892 acts are confirmed by the history lines in the Revised Laws of 1945. Still to be read in the session-law volume for its year: Act 242 of 1949, repealing the Community Property Act, in the regular-session volume for 1949. That volume’s imprint is not verified, and it should not be assumed: the 1949 special-session volume was printed by Advertiser Publishing Co., Ltd. and dated 1950, while the 1951 regular-session volume was printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Limited — the printer and the imprint year both vary from volume to volume.
• Hawaii. Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Houses of Nobles and Representatives, During the Twenty-First Year of His Reign, and the Third and Fourth Years of His Public Recognition, A.D. 1845 and 1846. Vol. 1. Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846. The Second Act of Kamehameha III: coverture at p. 59, aliens at pp. 77–78, and the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles at p. 107. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=AXUDAAAAQAAJ.
• Hawaii. Translation of the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, Established in the Reign [of] Kamehameha III. Lahainaluna, 1842. The title page names place and year only. Carries the Constitution of 1840 and the tax act of 1842 at pp. 24–26. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1934. Digital images. Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=6XxLAQAAIAAJ.
• Land Commission. Mahele and Kuleana Records. Digital images and transcriptions. Ava Konohiki. https://ava.konohiki.org.
• Land Commission. The Great Mahele Book, the Land Commission Awards, the Native and Foreign Testimony Registers, and the Royal Patents. Digital images and index. Papakilo Database. https://www.papakilodatabase.com.

Court Cases

• Bishop Trust Co. v. Thomas. 32 Haw. 140 (1931).
• Cummins v. Wond. 6 Haw. 69 (1872).
• First National Bank v. Gaines. 16 Haw. 731 (1905).
• Holt v. Kaaukai. 11 Haw. 497 (1898).
• McCandless v. Lansing. 19 Haw. 474 (1909).
• Naweli v. Auld. 6 Haw. 297 (1881).
• Oni v. Meek. 2 Haw. 87 (1858).
• United States v. Sai. 1 U.S.D.C. Haw. 118 (1901).
• Zupplein v. Austin. 6 Haw. 8 (1867).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Chinen, Jon J. The Great Mahele: Hawaii's Land Division of 1848. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1958. The standard account of the Mahele, the Land Commission, and the Kuleana Act.
• Chinen, Jon J. Original Land Titles in Hawaii. Honolulu: J. J. Chinen, 1961.
• FamilySearch. “Hawaii Taxation.” Research guide describing the surviving personal and property tax records and where they are held. Confirm the holdings statement against the guide before relying on it.
• “How Hawaii Got Its Tax System.” Summarizing R. Kamins. University of Hawaii. https://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord/articles/v9n26/How%20Hawaii%20Got%20Its%20Tax%20System.html.
• “Poll Tax.” Images of Old Hawaii. https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/poll-tax/.
• Tax Foundation of Hawaii. “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii.” https://www.tfhawaii.org/wordpress/blog/evolution-of-the-tax-system-in-hawaii/.
• United States Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America as of January 1, 1948: Reports and Summary for the Territories and Possessions. Bulletin 157-50. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951. Compiled by Sara L. Buchanan and others; a digest of Hawaii law on majority, married women's property, dower, curtesy, wills, intestacy, guardianship, marriage, and jury service, with citations to the Revised Laws of 1945. An addendum bringing Hawaii to 1 January 1954 was issued in 1956, and a later Report for Hawaii, Bulletin 157-52, states the law as of 1 January 1959. Digital images. FRASER. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5430. Catalog record. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011418560.
• University of Hawaii, William S. Richardson School of Law. “Hawaii Legal History” and “Kingdom Laws.” Research guides linking the Kingdom, Republic, and Territory session laws and codes. https://law-hawaii.libguides.com/hawaiilegalhistory.

Citations

1. Act of 25 November 1892, ch. 57, § 5 (“An Act to Reorganize the Judiciary Department”). The rule was carried from that act through an amendment of 1903, ch. 32, § 2, into the Revised Laws of Hawaii of 1925, 1935, and 1945, each at § 1, and stands now at HRS § 1-1. The courts read the “Hawaiian usage” preserved by the statute to mean a usage fixed before 25 November 1892. The chain is confirmed by the history line printed at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945 (Honolulu, T.H.: Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1945), § 1; catalog record, HathiTrust (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011606226 : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
2. Oni v. Meek, 2 Haw. 87 (1858). ↩
3. The Civil Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed in the Year of Our Lord 1859 (Honolulu: Printed for the Government, 1859), § 1287 (the wife “merged in her husband, and civilly dead”); § 1286 (the husband takes the wife's movable property and manages her immovable property, conveying it only with her written consent); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/civilcodehawaii00armsgoog : accessed 27 July 2026). The language came from the Second Act of Kamehameha III, “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments,” pt. I, ch. IV, art. I (“Of the Marriage Contract”), § 4, at p. 59 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Houses of Nobles and Representatives, During the Twenty-First Year of His Reign... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846): a wife is deemed for all civil purposes to be merged in her husband and civilly dead, and without his consent, unless otherwise stipulated by anterior contract, has no legal power to make contracts or to alienate and dispose of property. The same section adds that she is not civilly responsible in any court without joining her husband in the suit, is in no case liable to imprisonment in a civil action, and that the husband is personally responsible in damages for her tortious acts. ↩
4. Married Women's Property Act of 1888, ch. 11 (effective 23 June 1888), its chapter confirmed by the history lines at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12365 and 12368; carried into Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12365–12370; and see First National Bank v. Gaines, 16 Haw. 731 (1905) (the common-law unity of husband and wife destroyed). ↩ ↩
5. Act 273, Session Laws of 1945 (series D-201), “An Act Relating to Community Property,” approved 22 May 1945 and taking effect on its approval, printed in Laws of the Territory of Hawaii Passed by the Twenty-Third Legislature, Regular Session, 1945 (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, published by authority under the direction of the Secretary of Hawaii, 1945). Section 1 added ch. 301A to tit. 32 of the Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, at §§ 12391.01 ff.: property owned before marriage or before the effective date, whichever was later, and anything taken afterward by gift, devise, bequest, or descent, stayed separate (§ 12391.02), as did compensation for personal injuries (§ 12391.03); everything else acquired after marriage or after the effective date — the earnings of both spouses and the rents, issues, income, and profits of each one's separate property — became community property in which husband and wife each held a present, existing, and equal undivided half, arising as an incident of the marriage (§ 12391.04), with a rebuttable presumption that property was community (§ 12391.05). The chapter had no retroactive effect: rights accrued and acts done before it took effect stayed under the older law (§ 12391.16). Repealed by Act 242 of 1949, series D-296. The disposition is confirmed by the cumulative notes printed in Session Laws of Hawaii, 1951 (Honolulu: Printed by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Limited, 1951), which record §§ 12391.01–.04 and § 12391.06 repealed, and §§ 12391.05, 12391.10, and 12391.15 amended, by that act; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 27 July 2026). The act itself has not been read, so its effective date and the imprint of the volume carrying it stay unconfirmed — read Act 242 in the regular-session volume for 1949. ↩
6. Civil Code of 1859, § 1487 (ch. XXXVII, “Of Legal Majority”): males of twenty and females of eighteen are of legal age. The female age was raised to twenty by an act of 1919, ch. 116, § 1, and the rule passed through the Revised Laws of 1925, § 3032, of 1935, § 4510, and of 1945, § 12261, before both ages were lowered to eighteen in 1972. The equalization at twenty is reflected in U.S. Women's Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America as of January 1, 1948: Reports and Summary for the Territories and Possessions, Bulletin 157-50 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951), § 12261; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/5430 : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩ ↩
7. McCandless v. Lansing, 19 Haw. 474 (1909) (a minor's contract or deed is voidable and may be disaffirmed within a reasonable time after majority). ↩ ↩
8. Civil Code of 1859, § 1284, as replaced by the marriage-contracts act of 1872, ch. XXIII (male at least seventeen, female at least fourteen; parties not within the fourth degree of consanguinity; neither having a living spouse; a license required from the appointed agent). Section 2 of the act repealed the original § 1284 and ch. XXIV of the laws of 1870. The Territory re-enacted the same ages twice without changing them — Act 28, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1903 (approved 13 April 1903), and Act 42, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1907 (approved 2 April 1907) — and then raised them to eighteen and fifteen by Act 8, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1913 (approved 8 March 1913), amending R.L.H. § 2207; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 27 July 2026). The act is reprinted in place at Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884), tit. 5; digital images, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/pdf/CL_Title_5.pdf : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩ ↩ ↩
9. Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12351 (the male at least eighteen and the female at least sixteen) and §§ 12352, 12358 (written parental or guardian consent, under oath, for a party under twenty). The female age of sixteen entered the law by Act 59, series C-105, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1937 (approved 22 April 1937), which amended R.L.H. 1935, § 4630, by substituting “sixteen” for “fifteen”; Act 122, series C-115, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1939 (approved 28 April 1939), then allowed a female under sixteen but not under fifteen to marry with the written approval of the circuit judge having juvenile jurisdiction where she resided. The consent age of twenty for both sexes entered by Act 104, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1929 (approved 29 April 1929), amending R.L.H. 1925, § 2944. ↩ ↩
10. Civil Code of 1859, § 1291 (consent of the parent, guardian, or other person having charge required when the male is under twenty or the female under eighteen); this remained the rule until Act 104 of 1929, above. ↩
11. Civil Code of 1859, §§ 1283, 1285 (marriage unlawful without a license from the appointed agent; the rite performed by a person authorized by law on presentation of the license); now HRS §§ 572-11, 572-12. ↩
12. Civil Code of 1859, the marriage-proof act following § 1285, §§ 1–3 (every officiant to keep a record of each marriage and deliver a signed certificate to the parties). ↩
13. Civil Code of 1859, § 1290 (marriages legal in the country where contracted are valid in the Kingdom). ↩
14. Civil Code of 1859, art. LIII; and the marriage chapter of Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945 — the age, kinship, and license conditions are stated without reference to race. ↩
15. The pre-1848 communal tenure — the mōʻī holding all land and allotting its use through the konohiki to the makaʻāinana — is described in the histories of the Māhele cited in the Sources; and see Oni v. Meek, 2 Haw. 87 (1858). ↩
16. The Great Māhele of 1848, recorded in the Māhele Book (division signed late January to early March 1848), carrying out the Privy Council land resolutions of 1848. ↩
17. The Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles (the Land Commission) was created by the Second Act of Kamehameha III, “An Act to Organize the Executive Departments,” pt. I, ch. VII, art. IV (“Of the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles”), at p. 107 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Houses of Nobles and Representatives, During the Twenty-First Year of His Reign... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846): five commissioners, one of them the attorney general, appointed by the King through the Minister of the Interior on consultation with the Privy Council, to investigate and finally allow or reject all claims of private individuals, whether natives or foreigners, to landed property acquired before the act, their awards binding unless appealed. Claimants had to file their specifications and adduce their evidence within two years or be forever barred of all right to recover the land in the courts of justice, and a claim not presented in the time, place, and manner of the published notice was invalid and barred in law unless the claimant was absent from the kingdom with no representative in it. The board was directed to decide by the principles of the civil code on prescription, occupancy, fixtures, native usages as to landed tenures, water privileges and rights of piscary, the rights of women, the rights of absentees, tenancy and subtenancy, primogeniture, and rights of adoption, a majority decision being final unless appealed to the supreme court (§§ 7–8). An award was perfected into fee title by the issue of a Royal Patent on payment of a commutation, which the act left to be agreed on by the King in privy council and which in practice ran to about one-third of the unimproved value. An award not appealed from within ninety days of its date was made final and binding on all parties by the Act of 20 July 1854, “An Act to Provide for the Dissolution of the Board of Commissioners to Quiet Land Titles,” § 3, printed at Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854), p. 21: the award is a good and sufficient title to the person receiving it, his heirs and assigns, and as good a ground for an action of trespass or ejectment as a Royal Patent, saving the Government's right to commutation. The same act dissolved the Board on 31 March 1855 and sent its books, papers, and undelivered awards to the Minister of the Interior under a numbered inventory made in two copies, one filed with the Supreme Court (§§ 1–2, 4). Konohiki who had missed the filing deadline were given a fresh window to 1 November 1854 by an act of 10 August 1854, at p. 25. ↩
18. Act of 6 August 1850, “An Act Confirming Certain Resolutions of the King and Privy Council, passed on the 21st day of December, A.D. 1849, Granting to the Common People Allodial titles for their Own Lands and House Lots, and Certain other Privileges” (the Kuleana Act), §§ 1–7, printed at pp. 202–204 under the running head “Allodial Titles” and subscribed “Done and passed at the council house in Honolulu, this 6th day of August, A. D. 1850,” in Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives on the 21st of June, A.D. 1850, to which are Appended the Other Acts Passed by the House of Nobles and Representatives during their General Session for 1850 (Honolulu: Printed by H.M. Whitney, Govt. Press, 1850); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/penalcodehawaii00unkngoog : accessed 27 July 2026). The imprint is taken from the catalog record; the front matter in this scan is too damaged to read the title page. Section 1 grants fee-simple titles free of commutation to native tenants occupying and improving government land; § 2 does the same for tenants on lands held by the King, a chief, or a konohiki; § 3 empowers the Land Commission to award those titles; § 4 sets apart government land in lots of one to fifty acres at a minimum of fifty cents an acre for natives not otherwise supplied; § 5 caps a house lot at a quarter-acre; and § 6 limits a grant of kalo ground to what the claimant had really cultivated. ↩ ↩
19. Kuleana Act, § 7, at p. 203: when the landlords have taken allodial titles, the people on each of their lands are not to be deprived of the right to take firewood, house timber, aho cord, thatch, or ti leaf from the land they live on for their own private use, though not to sell for profit, and are to have drinking water, running water, and the right of way, the springs and roads being free to all on land granted in fee simple, except wells and water courses an individual has made. As first passed the section also required the tenant to inform the landlord or his agent and proceed with his consent. An amending act, passed by the House of Representatives 20 June 1851 and approved by the King 11 July 1851, recited that difficulties had arisen from konohiki forbidding tenants the benefits the law had given them, struck out the consent clause and the words “should they need them,” and re-enacted the section without them; it took force on publication in the Polynesian and the Elele. It is printed at pp. 98–99 of Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1851 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1851); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/hawaii-session-laws : accessed 27 July 2026). The reserved rights survive as HRS § 7-1. ↩ ↩
20. Act of 10 July 1850, “An Act to Abolish the Disabilities of Aliens to Acquire and Convey Lands in Fee Simple,” at pp. 146–147, under the running head “Lands in Fee Simple,” of the Penal Code of the Hawaiian Islands (1850) volume cited above. Section 1 let any alien resident in the Hawaiian islands acquire and hold to himself, his heirs and assigns, a fee-simple estate in any land of the kingdom, and convey it by sale, gift, exchange, will, or otherwise to a Hawaiian subject or to another resident alien; it required him to submit any dispute over his title to the kingdom’s own courts and abide by their decision without seeking the intervention of a foreign nation, on pain of forfeiture and escheat to the government; and it closed with a further proviso that no deed or other conveyance of land in fee simple to an alien was of any validity or effect unless it contained a clause providing for such submission, forfeiture, and escheat. Section 2 made the act take effect from the day of its passage. The closing proviso was repealed by the amending act of 28 June 1854, printed at Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854), p. 15, which gave two months from its publication for any objection founded on the omission, after which the objector was barred. A companion act of the same day, at p. 14, removed the disabilities that had attached to an alien for not holding a Certificate of Nationality, a document the Second Act of Kamehameha III had required of every alien coming to reside or do business, obtained from the Minister of the Interior on production of a certified passport, and without which no resident aliens' copartnership was valid (pt. I, ch. V, art. I, §§ 6–7, at p. 77 of Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Houses of Nobles and Representatives, During the Twenty-First Year of His Reign... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1 (Honolulu, Oahu: Charles E. Hitchcock, Printer, Government Press, 1846)). Before July 1850 a domiciled alien could take and transmit an inheritance in lands and tenements only “less than allodial or fee simple,” though he already had the marital and parental rights, dower, curtesy, and divorce, and was compellable to serve as a juror and pay taxes (§ 8, at p. 78). ↩
21. Civil Code of 1859, § 1286 (husband takes the wife's movable property and manages her immovable property, which she conveys only with her written consent, but which is not liable for his debts and descends to her heirs); § 1464 (a married woman may dispose of her property by will); the protection is older than the Code, the 1846 article providing at p. 59 that the wife's immovable and fixed property was not liable to be sold for her husband's debts, whether contracted on his own behalf or for her support, though it could be sold on execution for debts she had contracted before the marriage if no property of his could be found; and see Cummins v. Wond, 6 Haw. 69 (1872) (a wife's deed to her husband), and Holt v. Kaaukai, 11 Haw. 497 (1898) (construing the merger clause of § 1287). On a wife's conveyance to a stranger, Naweli v. Auld, 6 Haw. 297 (1881), holds that under § 1287 a wife cannot alienate her property without her husband's consent, that a deed she executes without his joinder is void and conveys nothing, and that his later death does not cure it, a deed taking effect from its delivery and being void always if void then. ↩ ↩
22. Civil Code of 1859, § 1299 (dower in one-third of all lands owned by the husband at any time during marriage); § 1308 (a woman bars her dower by joining the husband's deed and releasing her claim). The rule is older than the Code: the same two-part dower appears in the marriage-contract article of 1846, at Statute Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands... A.D. 1845 and 1846, vol. 1, p. 59, which entitled the wife on her husband's death to a life estate in one-third of all immovable and fixed property he owned at the time of the marriage or acquired during it, and to an absolute property in one-third of his movable effects in possession or reducible to possession at his death, after payment of all his just debts. ↩
23. Civil Code of 1859, § 1256 (no release of dower by an undivorced wife is valid without her acknowledgment, apart from her husband, before the Registrar of Conveyances). ↩
24. Civil Code of 1859, § 1302 (no dower against a mortgagee for the purchase money, even where the wife did not join); now HRS § 533-4. ↩
25. Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12100 and 12115, as amended by Act 273 of 1945, §§ 3–4: a sentence added to each provides that the interests the section gives a wife in her husband's property, and a husband in his wife's, do not reach the other's interest in community property. Act 273, § 5, likewise put community property outside § 12233, which had given a wife divorced for her husband's offense her own real and personal property absolutely, and § 7 repealed §§ 12367 and 12373–12375 on a married woman's earnings and a husband's liability for her obligations. On death, ch. 301A, § 12391.15, applied the probate law to community as well as separate property, left the judge of the estate to determine what was community and what was separate, and charged claims and administration expenses paid out of the community equally against the survivor's half and the half passing by the decedent's will or to his heirs, excepting the survivor's half from death taxes on the decedent's interest. ↩ ↩ ↩
26. Civil Code of 1859, §§ 1254, 1255 (a conveyance is recorded on the acknowledgment of the party before the Registrar, a notary, or a judge; if unacknowledged, on proof by a subscribing witness before a judge; if the witnesses are dead, on proof of the handwriting). ↩
27. Civil Code of 1859, § 1255 (a conveyance not recorded is void as against a subsequent purchaser). ↩
28. Zupplein v. Austin, 6 Haw. 8, 14 (1867); Bishop Trust Co. v. Thomas, 32 Haw. 140, 144 (1931) (no distinction between real and personal property in descent). ↩
29. Civil Code of 1859, § 1447 (ch. XXXII, “Of the Descent of Property, both Real and Personal”); carried through the Revised Laws of 1925, § 3302, of 1935, § 4810, and of 1945, § 12070, now HRS § 532-2. ↩
30. Civil Code of 1859, § 1448 (equal division among the children, with representation; failing issue, one-half to the surviving spouse and one-half to the parents, then to brothers and sisters and their issue; a sole surviving spouse takes all; symmetrical for a woman intestate); amended by an act of 1872, ch. 1, § 1, which was repealed by an act of 1898, ch. 47, § 2, and replaced by § 1 of the same act; carried through the Revised Laws of 1925, § 3305, of 1935, § 4813, and of 1945, § 12073, now HRS § 532-4. ↩
31. Civil Code of 1859, § 1299 (a life estate in one-third of the land the husband held during the marriage, and an absolute one-third of his movable effects at his death after payment of his debts); Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, §§ 12100–12114. ↩
32. Civil Code of 1859, § 1305 (the widow may occupy the land or take one-third of its rents and profits until her dower is assigned) and § 1306 (she may remain in the husband's house and have maintenance out of his estate). ↩
33. Civil Code of 1859, § 1307 (a widow is not endowed where dower is barred for the wife's misconduct). ↩
34. Civil Code of 1859, § 1286 (the husband's curtesy in the wife's land); Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12115. ↩
35. Civil Code of 1859, § 1346 (the guardian gives a bond with surety, makes an inventory, manages the estate, accounts within one year and afterward, and pays over the estate to the ward at the end). ↩
36. Civil Code of 1859, § 1344 (if the minor is under thirteen the judge of probate appoints the guardian; if above thirteen the minor may nominate his own, subject to the judge’s approval); the age was raised to sixteen by Act 10, § 1, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1913 (approved 11 March 1913), amending R.L.H. § 2296, ch. 149, so that the judge appoints below sixteen and the minor may nominate above it. ↩
37. Civil Code of 1859, § 1345 (the guardian continues in office until the minor reaches twenty, or until discharged). ↩
38. Civil Code of 1859, § 1345 (the father, and after him the mother, retains the care of the minor's person and education) and § 1347 (a father may appoint a testamentary guardian by his last will). ↩
39. Civil Code of 1859, § 1289 (children whose parents were not legally married are bastards, cannot inherit from the father, but take by inheritance from the mother); and see § 1452 (an illegitimate child is an heir to the mother), carried as Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935, § 4815. ↩
40. Civil Code of 1859, § 1289, with the appended act “To Render Legitimate Children Born Out of Wedlock” (children declared legitimate on the marriage of the parents with each other). ↩
41. Civil Code of 1859, § 1463 (every person of full age and of sound mind may dispose of his estate, real and personal, by will); full age is twenty for a man and eighteen for a woman (note 6). An amendment of 1890, ch. 48, § 1, fixed the age at twenty for every person without regard to sex, and it stood so through Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1925, § 3317, and Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935, § 4910, to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12170 (“Every person of the age of twenty years and of sound mind may dispose of his estate both real and personal by will”). ↩
42. Civil Code of 1859, § 1464 (any married woman may dispose of her property by will); carried to Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12171. ↩
43. Civil Code of 1859, § 1465 (no will valid unless in writing, signed by the testator or by another in his presence and at his direction, and attested by two or more competent witnesses subscribing in the testator's presence). ↩
44. Civil Code of 1859, § 1467 (a beneficial gift to a subscribing witness is void unless there are two other competent subscribing witnesses); § 1468 (a witness who would take a share had there been no will keeps that much of the gift); § 1466 (subsequent incompetency of a witness does not defeat the will). ↩
45. Civil Code of 1859, § 1472 (a marriage after the making of a will, together with the birth of a child, revokes the will). ↩
46. Civil Code of 1859, § 1473 (a will made by an unmarried woman is revoked by her subsequent marriage). ↩
47. Civil Code of 1859, § 1474 (no written will allowed to be proved after five years from the testator's death, with an allowance where a minor is interested). ↩
48. The Civil Code of 1859 fixes no minimum age for an executor; an executor had to be competent to accept the trust and to give the probate bond, which required full age, and where a minor was named the court committed administration to a competent adult. The Territory likewise set no age: the statutory qualification was residence, at Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12009 (every executor, administrator, and guardian appointed by a Territorial court must be an individual residing in the Territory or a Territorial trust company). A married woman could serve, by Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 12368, carried from the Act of 1888, ch. 11, § 4.From 1943 the fiduciary also had to be resident: Act 182, series C-120, Session Laws of Hawaii, 1943 (S.B. 126, approved 12 May 1943), adding §§ 4775A–4775C to the Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1935 — every executor, administrator, and guardian appointed by a Territorial court, including any co-fiduciary, had to be either an individual residing in the Territory or a trust company organized under its laws (§ 4775A); the rule spared anyone already appointed, or acting under a will already admitted to probate, and anyone later appointed under the will of a person who died before it took effect (§ 4775B); and a fiduciary who afterward gave up Territorial residence vacated the office unless a circuit judge allowed him to continue (§ 4775C). ↩
49. The first written tax law, of 27 December 1826 (each man half a picul of sandalwood or four Spanish dollars; each woman a mat six by twelve, or tapa, or one dollar); see “Poll Tax,” Images of Old Hawaii, citing Woods. ↩
50. Constitution of 1840, “Prerogatives of the King,” at p. 12 of Translation of the Constitution and Laws of the Hawaiian Islands, Established in the Reign [of] Kamehameha III (Lahainaluna, 1842), the title page carrying place and year with no printer named: the King has the direction of the government property — the poll tax, the land tax, the three days' monthly labor — though in conformity to the laws, and lands forfeited for the nonpayment of taxes revert to him. The rates are in the same volume, ch. III, “An Act to Regulate the Taxes,” §§ 1–2, at pp. 24–26. The translator's preface warns that the rendering is not literal and that the Hawaiian original governs judicial proceedings. Photo-facsimile reprint, Washington, D.C.: Statute Law Book Co., 1934. ↩
51. An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Law Relating to Internal Taxes, §§ 2–16, printed in Compiled Laws of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Printed at the Hawaiian Gazette Office, 1884), pp. 116 ff. (poll tax $1 on males 17–60; school tax $2 on males 20–60; road tax $2 on males 17–50, workable off in labor; property tax three-quarters of one percent on real and personal property; dog and vehicle taxes; exemptions for infirmity, poverty, and students); and the Act of 16 August 1854 repealing the exemptions of clergymen, missionaries and their servants, school inspectors, trustees, and constables, and making soldiers liable to the school tax from 1 January 1855, printed at Laws of His Majesty Kamehameha III., King of the Hawaiian Islands, Passed by the Nobles and Representatives at their Session, 1854 (Honolulu: Printed by Order of the Government, 1854), p. 34; digital images, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/civilcode/pdf/CL_Title_2.pdf : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩ ↩
52. The Territorial net income tax of 1901 (two percent on individual income over $1,000 and on corporate net profits); see Tax Foundation of Hawaii, “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii,” and R. Kamins's history summarized in “How Hawaii Got Its Tax System”. ↩
53. The poll tax (by then consolidating the school and road taxes, and reset in 1932 as a $5 tax on employees) was abolished in 1943; a tax on wages, salaries, and dividends was enacted in 1933 for relief funds; the personal property tax was abolished in 1947. Tax Foundation of Hawaii, “Evolution of the Tax System in Hawaii”; “Poll Tax,” Images of Old Hawaii. The poll tax was never a qualification for voting. ↩
54. Civil Code of 1859, tit. 4, art. XLVIII (“Of Juries and Trial by Jury”): separate lists of native and foreign jurors; a native tried by a jury of natives and a foreigner by a jury of foreigners; a mixed jury where one party was Hawaiian and the other a foreigner. ↩
55. Hawaiian Organic Act, Act of 30 April 1900, ch. 339, 31 Stat. 141, at § 83: the laws requiring juries of aliens or foreigners only, or impaneled of natives of Hawaii only, are repealed, and all juries are to be constituted without reference to the race or place of nativity of the jurors; but no person may serve who is not a male citizen of the United States, twenty-one years of age, and able understandingly to speak, read, and write English; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/us_stat_31 : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
56. Hawaiian Organic Act, § 83; Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, § 9791 (a juror must be a male citizen of twenty-one or over), per Legal Status of Women, Bulletin 157-50. ↩
57. The Penal Code of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Compiled from the Penal Code of 1850 and the Various Penal Enactments Since Made (Honolulu, Oahu: Printed at the Govt. Press, 1869), ch. IV (“Capacity and Responsibility for Offenses”), §§ 1–2 (an infant under seven is incompetent to commit an offense; between seven and fourteen, competency is determined by the evidence of the child's intelligence and understanding, with no presumption for or against; full responsibility at fourteen); digital images, Hawaiian Kingdom (https://www.hawaiiankingdom.org/pdf/Penal_Code.pdf : accessed 27 July 2026). ↩
58. The competency test — understanding the oath and able to relate facts — governed a witness of any age; the judge examined a child before receiving the testimony. Hawaii’s law of evidence, consolidated and amended out of the evidence article of the Civil Code of 1859, turned competency on understanding and interest rather than race or sex. The Revised Laws sections carrying that rule forward are not pinned down; read the evidence chapter of Revised Laws of Hawaii, 1945, against the Civil Code article. ↩
59. Hawaiian Organic Act, § 4 (citizens of the Republic of Hawaii on 12 August 1898 declared citizens of the United States and of the Territory); United States v. Sai, 1 U.S.D.C. Haw. 118 (1901); the Chinese Exclusion Act was extended to Hawaii by the Organic Act, and federal naturalization limits on “aliens ineligible to citizenship” reached the jury service and naturalization of many Asian immigrants. ↩