Idaho Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

Law from two countries

Idaho law came from two countries. Contract, crime, procedure, and the law of land titles are English. The statute said so plainly: where the codes did not answer a question, the judges were to decide it by the common law of England, so long as that did not clash with the Constitution or laws of the United States¹. Marital property came from a different root. Community property — the rule that husband and wife each own half of what the marriage earns — is a Spanish civil-law institution. California kept it from its Mexican years and wrote it into the codes of 1872, and when Idaho drew its own codes from California's it took the system whole². This single fact changes how nearly every Idaho property and inheritance record reads.

The codes covered a great deal, so the English common law operated mostly in the gaps. Because the statutes were copied from California, California decisions carried weight in the Idaho courts, and the 1908 codification prints the matching California section beneath each of its own.

The chain of compilations

Idaho Territory was organized in 1863 out of what had been Washington Territory; the region had earlier been part of Oregon Territory. The first territorial legislature met in 1863–64 and adopted a body of statute law almost at once. Idaho became a state on 3 July 1890 under the Constitution of 1889. The law runs in an unbroken chain of compilations, and knowing the chain is how a rule is traced: the territorial session laws from 1864, the Compiled and Revised Laws of 1875, the Code of Civil Procedure of 1881, the Revised Statutes of 1887, the Revised Codes of 1908, the Compiled Statutes of 1919, the Idaho Code Annotated of 1932, and the Idaho Code of 1947–48. Each compilation prints a history line under the section, which points back to the one before it.

Two links in that chain are easy to miss and matter a great deal here. The Compiled and Revised Laws of 1875 gathered the territorial statutes in force at the eighth session, and it is the text the 1887 revisers worked from. That session did more than compile: it enacted new civil, criminal, and probate practice acts in January 1875, and those acts, not the ones of 1864, are the ones that govern the second half of the territorial period. The Code of Civil Procedure of 1881 is cited in hundreds of the history lines printed in the second volume of the 1908 codes³. Because Idaho put wills, inheritance, guardianship, executors, witnesses, juries, and criminal capacity in that volume, nearly every rule in the inheritance and courts sections below runs back through the 1881 code rather than straight from 1887 to 1864.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Twenty-one for men and eighteen for women

Full majority came at different ages for the two sexes: males were minors until 21, females until 18⁴. That difference came into the territory in 1864 and lasted through 1950. For a researcher the practical points are that a woman reached full legal capacity three years earlier than a man, and that the age attached to a record depends on the person's sex.

What a minor could not do alone

A minor's contract was voidable — good until the minor chose to undo it. A contract made while the person was under 18 could be disaffirmed, meaning undone, either before majority or within a reasonable time after. A male minor between 18 and 21 could also undo his contract, but only by giving back what he had received or paying what it was worth⁵. A deed given by a minor fell under the same rule, which is why a minor's land was ordinarily sold for him by a guardian under a court order rather than by his own deed (see Property Ownership).

Marriage

Age and parental consent

To marry in a ceremony, each person had to be old enough. Under the territorial law carried into the Revised Statutes of 1887, a man of 18 and a woman of 16 could marry⁸. From 1889 the age was 18 for both⁹.

A younger couple could still marry if a parent or guardian agreed. Before 1889 that meant a boy under 18 or a girl under 16; from 1889, anyone under 18. The person performing the marriage had to check both the ages and the consent, unless the under-age party had been married before¹⁰. From 1921 the county recorder could not issue a license to anyone under 18 unless a parent or guardian signed a written consent and swore to it before an official¹¹. From that year the consent is a signed, notarized paper, filed with the rest of the marriage application.

In 1943 the legislature set a minimum age for the first time. Consent alone now worked only if the under-age party was at least 15. A girl under 15 also needed an order from the probate court, granted after a hearing the county physician was called to attend; a boy under 15 could not marry at all¹². Such a marriage leaves a probate file behind it, and a copy of the order sits with the recorder's marriage papers.

How a marriage was recorded

The recorder had to satisfy himself that the parties were free to marry, or else take their sworn statement in writing, and he kept a book of the returns¹³. The ceremony took whatever form the parties chose, so long as they declared in the officiant's presence that they took each other as husband and wife¹⁴. The application file — where that sworn statement and any parental consent sit — is often fuller than the license itself.

The restrictions on marriage

A marriage was void where the parties were too closely related — parents and children, ancestors and descendants of every degree, brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and uncles and nieces or aunts and nephews¹⁵. A later marriage contracted while a former husband or wife was living was illegal and void from the beginning — but with two exceptions that matter to researchers. The rule did not apply where the earlier marriage had been annulled or dissolved, nor where the former spouse had been absent and not known to be living for five straight years, or was generally reputed and believed to be dead. In those two cases the second marriage was valid unless and until a court declared otherwise¹⁶. A second marriage that looks bigamous on paper may therefore have been perfectly good, and the five-year rule is often the explanation. A marriage was voidable — valid until a court annulled it — where a party was physically incapable of entering the marriage state, or where consent had been obtained by fraud or force¹⁷.

A marriage contracted outside Idaho that was valid where it was celebrated was valid in Idaho¹⁸. A couple facing one of these impediments could therefore marry in another state and return, and their marriage will not appear in an Idaho recorder's book.

The race bar ran from the territory's first legislature to the eve of the civil-rights era. The act of 1864 made it a crime for a white person to marry someone of African descent, an Indian, or a Chinese, and punished the officiant too; the fourth territorial session recast the ban in civil form, voiding such marriages rather than merely punishing them¹⁹. As carried into the codes, it voided every marriage between a white person and a person of African descent²⁰. A single sentence of the 1921 amendment widened the ban to reach people of Asian descent and, in the same breath, barred first cousins from marrying²¹. In 1959 the legislature struck the racial half of that sentence, leaving the cousin rule standing alone²². A mixed-race couple in this period therefore either has no Idaho marriage or married elsewhere, and the ban reached the children's legitimacy and inheritance.

Common-law marriage and why it matters

Idaho recognized common-law marriage through 1950. The statute made marriage a civil contract that both parties had to agree to, and then said that agreement alone was not enough: it had to be followed either by a ceremony, or by the couple taking up the rights and duties of marriage between themselves⁶. That second route is the key. A couple who agreed to be married and then lived as husband and wife were lawfully married, with no ceremony and no license. The rule came in with the territorial marriage act of 1877 and held until Idaho abolished common-law marriage on 1 January 1996, long after this period; marriages formed before that date stayed valid⁷.

The consequence for research is large: a valid Idaho marriage may have left no marriage record at all. Such a marriage was proved by how the couple lived — cohabitation, reputation in the community, the census, and later declarations — and it often first surfaces in a probate file when a widow claims her share.

Property Ownership

Idaho's marital-property law is community property, and it governs how deeds and estates read. Property inside a marriage fell into three categories, and every deed and estate record turns on which one is involved²³:

Two qualifications go with that table. The rents and profits of a wife's separate property fell into the community unless the will or deed that gave her the property said they were for her sole and separate use, so the wording of a bequest could change who controlled the income from it. And the whole scheme gave way to a marriage settlement: where a couple made one, their agreement governed instead of the statute²⁴.

Who could own land

A man owned land at any age, and at 21 he held full power to buy, sell, mortgage, and convey his own separate land in his own name.

A married woman's position differed sharply from that in the common-law states, where a wife lived under coverture — the doctrine that merged her legal identity into her husband's. In Idaho what she brought to the marriage, and what came to her afterwards by gift or inheritance, stayed her own separate property. She bought and held land in her own name throughout the period, which puts her in the land records under that name.

Who managed that property is what changed, and the date to know is 1903. Until then her husband had the management and control of her separate property, and no part of it could be sold, nor any lien placed on it — a lien being a creditor's claim against the property itself, securing a debt — except by a writing they both signed and she acknowledged on a privy examination — a private interview with an official, apart from her husband, in which she confirmed she was acting of her own free will²⁵. The married women's act of 1903 swept that away. From that year her separate property was hers to the same extent and with the same effect as a husband's²⁶, and she had the management, control, and absolute power of disposition of it, and could contract about it as a married man could²⁷.

Idaho also swept away the common-law interests a spouse took in the other's land: dower and curtesy were both abolished²⁸ — dower being a widow's life interest, meaning the use of her husband's land for the rest of her life, and curtesy the widower's mirror-image right. The community-property system provided for the surviving spouse instead (see Inheritance).

Whose signature a deed carries

Because there was no dower, a husband's deed of his own separate land carried his signature alone, and the land passed free of any claim by his wife. Community land was different: the husband's power of disposition stopped at the homestead — the family dwelling and the land around it, which the law set aside beyond the reach of creditors — and at the part of the common property the couple used as a residence²⁹, and no conveyance or mortgage of community real property or of the homestead was valid unless both husband and wife joined in it and the wife acknowledged it³⁰ — acknowledgment being her appearance before an officer, who certified that she was the person named and had signed the deed.

Her own separate land followed the same 1903 dividing line. Under the territorial rule carried into the Revised Statutes of 1887, no estate in a married woman's real property passed by her deed unless she acknowledged it and her husband, if he was a resident, joined in it³¹ — the one exception being a husband who had not been a bona fide — genuine, settled — resident of Idaho at any time in the preceding year, in which case she conveyed alone³². The married women's act of 1903 then gave her the power to sell and convey her own real property in the same manner and with like effect as a married man could his²⁷. The 1908 codifiers printed both provisions, the new one in the civil code and the old one in the conveyancing title, which is why the Revised Codes appear to say two things at once. The compilers of 1919 settled it by dropping the older sections altogether³³.

For a researcher the practical test is the date on the deed. Before 1903, a married woman's deed of her own land ordinarily carries her husband's signature beside hers, and one she signed alone points to a husband living outside Idaho. After 1903 she could convey alone, though conveyancers went on collecting both signatures for years out of caution, so a joint signature after that date proves nothing either way.

Two records that name a wife's property

Two kinds of document sit in the county recorder's books alongside the deeds, and both are worth asking for by name.

The first is an inventory of the wife's separate property. A married woman could have a full inventory of her separate property made out and recorded, and the filing was legal notice that the property was hers, which put it beyond the reach of her husband's creditors³⁴. Where one was filed it is a dated list of what a woman owned in her own right, which is a rare thing to find for a nineteenth-century wife.

The second is a marriage settlement — what would now be called a prenuptial agreement. These had to be in writing and executed and acknowledged in the same way as a deed, and then recorded in the recorder's office of every county where any affected land lay, and the recording gave notice to everyone³⁵. A minor could make one, so a settlement is one of the few routes by which an under-age person dealt with property in his own right. A recorded settlement names both parties and the property, and it overrode the ordinary community-property rules, so it can explain an estate that otherwise divides oddly.

Witnessing a deed

Competency, not age, decided who could witness a deed — and in practice most Idaho deeds carry no witnesses at all. An instrument had to be acknowledged before an officer, or else proved, and the acknowledgment or proof certified, before the recorder would record it³⁶; and instruments were recorded by the county recorder of the county where the land lay³⁷. A witness mattered only on the second route. Where a deed was not acknowledged, its execution could be proved by a party to it or by a subscribing witness — a person who had signed the deed as a witness when it was made. That witness had to be personally known to the officer, or vouched for on oath by someone credible, and had to swear that the grantor — the person making the deed — was the person the deed named, and that he himself had signed as a witness³⁸. Anyone competent to testify could do that, so a deed witness was held to the same competency test as any other witness (see Courts). The practical point is that an Idaho deed usually yields the certifying officer's name rather than a neighbor's.

Children and land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, or devise. Conveying it was the probate court's business: a minor's real estate was sold under a court order, the sale carried out by a guardian who gave bond and accounted for the proceeds (see Inheritance). Where an Idaho deed conveys a child's land, the guardianship file in the probate court holds the family.

Restrictions on land ownership by minorities

The rule in Idaho was restriction, and mining was the exception. From the act of 1890–91, re-enacted in 1899, no one but a United States citizen or a person who had filed a declaration of intention to become one could acquire land in the state, and neither could a company whose members were not all citizens or declarants. Land that did come into an alien's hands had to be sold within five years of the title being perfected, or it escheated — reverted — to the state. Two carve-outs softened it: a creditor could still take title in enforcing a lien, and an alien widow or heir could still take land by inheritance³⁹.

Mining was left out of the restriction altogether. Any person, citizen or alien, could take, hold, and dispose of mining claims and mining property⁴⁰. That is why an immigrant miner may hold recorded claims while owning no farm or town lot.

One bar went further, and filing for citizenship could not get around it. People who were barred from becoming citizens at all could own no land in Idaho, and the mining law carried its own exception denying Chinese people and other people of Asian descent born outside the United States the right to buy land or any real property⁴¹. The state constitution said much the same. In 1923 Idaho passed a broader Alien Land Law, which limited these immigrants — under the citizenship rules of the day, mainly Japanese and other Asians — to whatever a treaty with their home country allowed, which in practice meant only short farm leases⁴². The laws fell away after 1948 and ended with the change in citizenship law in 1952. An ancestor with an Asian surname who farmed in these years may own no land under his own name, holding it instead through an American-born child or a company.

Inheritance

A person who died without a will died intestate, and statutes divided the estate. Idaho ran two tracks, because separate property and community property descended differently. Either way the property passed to the heirs, under the supervision of the probate court — the court that oversaw the estates of the dead — and through an administrator, the person that court appointed to gather the estate, pay the debts, and hand out what was left⁴³. Two words recur below: issue means a person's descendants, children and grandchildren and on down; and next of kin means the nearest blood relatives, counted outward a step at a time.

Separate property when there was no will

The separate property of the person who died passed by this schedule⁴⁴:

Two things trip up researchers here. The widow's fraction is not fixed: she took half against a single child, but only a third once there were two or more. And the last two rows turn on a date. Until 1907 a childless widow whose husband left no parent living had to share the estate with his brothers and sisters; the amendment of that year cut them out and gave her the whole of it⁴⁴.

Community property at a spouse's death

Half of the community property always went to the surviving husband or wife, subject to the community debts, and that half is what stands in place of dower and curtesy. What happened to the other half changed twice inside this period, so the date of death decides the answer.

From 1867 to 1907, on the death of either spouse, half of the common property went to the survivor and the other half went to the descendants of the one who died. If there were no descendants, the whole of it went to the survivor⁴⁵.

From 1907 to 1911, the deceased spouse's half became subject to his or her will. Where there was no will it went to the couple's legitimate issue, and where no issue survived, the whole community passed to the survivor⁴⁶.

From 1911 onward the rule ran the other way. The deceased spouse's half could still be left by will, but only to the couple's children or to a parent of either spouse, and no more than half of that half could go to a parent. Where there was no will, the half now went to the surviving spouse rather than to the children, and no administration of a wife's estate was needed at all if she died without a will⁴⁷.

The practical effect for research is large. A husband who died without a will in 1905 left his community half to his children; one who died without a will in 1915 left it to his widow, and the children took nothing from it. A probate file that seems to shortchange the children of a later marriage is often just this rule at work, and a wife who died after 1911 without a will may have left no probate file at all.

Children born outside marriage

An illegitimate child was always an heir of its mother and inherited from her as though born in wedlock. The child was also an heir of the father where he had acknowledged himself to be the father in writing, signed in the presence of a competent witness. That written acknowledgment reached only the father's own estate, though: it did not let the child inherit from the father's relatives, so no share of a grandparent's, uncle's, or aunt's estate came with it. The child gained that wider right only if the parents afterwards married and the father then acknowledged him or took him into the family⁴⁸. Two further routes made such a child legitimate outright: the subsequent marriage of its parents⁴⁹, or the father's public acknowledgment of the child and reception of it into his family, with the consent of his wife if he was married, which made the child legitimate from the time of its birth⁵⁰. A written acknowledgment before a witness, or a father taking a child into his household, therefore has direct inheritance consequences, and the document may sit in the probate or the county records.

Minors' inheritance and guardians

A minor's inheritance was administered by a guardian under the probate court's supervision and under bond. A guardian was needed whenever a minor took property or was left without a parent to manage it; the guardianship generated an inventory, periodic accountings, and a final settlement.

The ages are specific. A minor under 14 had a guardian appointed by the probate court; a minor above 14 could nominate his own guardian, subject to the court's approval⁵¹. A guardian kept the care of the minor and the management of his estate until the minor reached majority or married, or until the court discharged him⁵². So guardianship ended at 21 for a boy and 18 for a girl, and marriage ended it at any age.

That makes the guardian's final account a dated event worth pinning down, but it does not automatically date a birthday. Where the minor came of age, the closing account falls near his twenty-first or her eighteenth birthday and can bracket a birth year that no vital record supplies. Where the guardianship closed early, the trigger was usually a marriage — and given that Idaho girls could marry at 16 before 1889 and at 18 after, an account settled well short of the expected age is a prompt to go looking for a marriage rather than to revise a birth year.

Wills and who could make or witness them

A person over 18, of sound mind, could make a will disposing of all his estate⁵³. A witnessed will had to be signed at the end by the testator — the person making the will — or by someone else in his presence and at his direction, and then signed by two witnesses at his request and in his presence⁵⁴. Idaho also recognized the olographic will — also spelled holographic, meaning one entirely written, dated, and signed in the testator's own hand — which stood on the handwriting alone and was proved as other private writings are proved⁵⁵. One trap for the researcher: a married woman could dispose of her whole separate estate by will without her husband's consent, but her will had to be signed in front of witnesses like any other, so a handwritten, unwitnessed will offered as a wife's will was void⁵⁶.

Competency, not age, decided who could witness a will. Each witness had to write his place of residence beside his name, though a will was good even if he failed to; and a witness who was competent when he attested did not spoil the will by becoming incompetent later⁵⁷. Who was competent is the general test described under Courts, applied as of the day the will was signed.

An executor or executrix — the person named in a will to carry it out — had to be of the age of majority, a man at 21 and a woman at 18, and was disqualified by conviction of an infamous crime, meaning a serious offense such as a felony, or by a finding of unfitness for drunkenness, improvidence, or want of understanding or integrity⁵⁸. A person named as executor who was under age took no letters — the court's written authority to act — until reaching majority.

Taxation

Idaho taxed individuals in three ways over this period: on what they owned, by the head, and — from 1931 — on what they earned.

The property tax

All property in the state, except what federal law exempted, was subject to taxation⁵⁹. The county assessor valued it at its full cash value, assessing land and the improvements on it separately⁶⁰. The assessment roll that came out of that work names the owner, so it places a family in a county year by year, and the split between land and improvements shows when a house went up. Age was no bar: a child's land was assessed like anyone else's, so a minor can appear on a tax roll in his own name.

The poll tax

A poll tax, also called a capitation tax, is a flat tax charged on a person by the head rather than on property, and a "poll" is the taxable person. Idaho charged one from the territorial years onward. For genealogy it is the more useful of the two taxes, because it catches men who owned nothing and so leaves a yearly list of them.

So the age that put a man on a poll list was 21 throughout, and the age that took him off it was 60 until 1889 and 50 from then on. The territorial legislature made that change in a single act, which lowered the upper age and at the same stroke exempted government pensioners and men permanently disabled from manual labor; the state added honorably discharged soldiers in 1901. A name once entered in the poll-tax book was struck only by order of the county commissioners. A man can therefore vanish from a poll list while alive and still living in the county, and the reason is often an exemption, or simply his birthday, rather than a move.

The general poll tax did not last to 1950. The legislature repealed it by an act approved 27 January 1912, keeping only a saving clause for taxes already charged⁶⁷. After that year there are no more general poll-tax books, and a man's absence from the county records proves nothing at all. The road poll tax outlived the repeal and went on being charged and collected by the county assessor, so road-district lists carry on where the poll books stop. Until 1911 a man could work his road tax off with two days' labor on the roads instead of paying it; from that year the legislature ended the labor option and required money⁶⁵.

The income tax

Idaho enacted a personal income tax in 1931, as part of a package that cut the state property-tax levy by whatever the new tax raised and created the office of Tax Commissioner to run it⁶⁸. It came in at the bottom of the Depression and it is the third tax an Idahoan of this period could owe. The returns themselves are confidential and are not open records, so for genealogy the income tax matters less for what it left behind than for what it explains: from 1931 the state's revenue no longer rested on property alone, and the county property rolls stop being the near-complete list of taxed adults that they had been.

Courts

Jury service

The rule was set at the first territorial session and never really changed: a man who could vote could sit on a jury. The Jurors Act of 1864 made any qualified voter eligible to serve on a grand or trial jury, and the right to vote came from the federal act that created the territory, which gave it to free white men over 21⁶⁹. From the territory's first year, then, an Idaho jury was a jury of white men.

The later codes spelled it out. A juror had to be a United States citizen and a voter in the county, in sound mind, not infirm, and able to understand enough English to follow the case⁷⁰. Because a voter had to be a citizen of 21 or older⁷¹, the jury age was 21. That was all the law required, so a man who owned no land served like anyone else, and so did the bystanders called in off the street to fill out a short panel. A man was disqualified by a felony conviction, or by a misdemeanor that showed dishonesty or depravity⁷².

Women on the jury

Idaho women became voters when the state adopted woman suffrage in 1896, and on the wording of the jury law that made them eligible jurors. Some did serve in the years that followed, though it stayed rare. In 1924 the Idaho Supreme Court ended it, holding in State v. Kelley that voting and jury duty are separate things — the vote a right the constitution guarantees, jury service a duty the legislature hands out — so a woman voter was not automatically a juror. Women served again only from 1943, when the legislature wrote "men or women or both" into the jury law⁷³. For most of this period, an Idaho jury is a jury of men.

Chinese residents and Native people on the jury

The Idaho Constitution barred from voting, jury service, and public office any Chinese person or person of Mongolian descent not born in the United States, and any Indian not taxed who had not left tribal life and adopted what the law called the habits of civilization⁷⁴. The same clause reached bigamists and polygamists, aimed at Mormons in the territory's test-oath years. Chinese residents and most Native Americans therefore could not sit on an Idaho jury in this period.

Age of criminal responsibility

A child under 14 could be convicted only on clear proof that he knew at the time that what he did was wrong; from 14 a person was fully responsible. The same statute excused the insane⁷⁵. From 1905 Idaho ran a juvenile system alongside the criminal law: a child of 16 or under who broke a law or ordinance, or who was beyond his parents' control, counted as delinquent and was handled on the juvenile docket rather than tried as an adult⁷⁶. After 1905, the record wanted for a child offender is likely in the juvenile files.

Witnesses

Age was not the test for a witness; understanding was. But who counted as a competent witness changed sharply in 1875, and before that it turned on race.

The first legislature of 1864 shut out whole groups by race. In civil cases, Chinese, Native, and Black people could not testify at all when a white person was a party, each group defined by a fraction of ancestry. The criminal law went further and barred the same people from testifying for or against any white person. A felony conviction also disqualified a witness, and neither husband nor wife could testify for or against the other⁷⁷.

The eighth territorial legislature rewrote Idaho's court procedure from end to end, passing a new criminal act on 14 January 1875 and a new civil act the next day. Between them they swept away the racial bars and the bar on convicted felons. The new civil act stated the opposite rule: anyone who could observe something and describe it could be a witness, whatever their stake in the case, their criminal record, or their religion. Only three groups were left out — people of unsound mind when called to the stand, children under 10 who seemed unable to grasp the facts or tell them truthfully, and anyone suing a dead person's estate, as to conversations with the person who had died⁷⁸. Only the second turns on age, and it was not a fixed cut-off: a young child who understood that an oath meant telling the truth, and could give a straight account, could testify, with the judge deciding case by case. The rule for spouses survived in a milder form — neither husband nor wife could be examined for or against the other without that spouse's consent, and private conversations between them stayed protected⁷⁹.

The dividing line is 15 January 1875. In a case heard before that date, a Chinese, Native, or Black party may have gone to judgment legally unable to speak, and the file will show it. After it, the same rules applied to everyone.

Sources and Where to Verify

Constitutions

• 50constitutions.org. Amendments to the Idaho Constitution, including the removal of the racial voting, jury, and office disqualifications. https://50constitutions.org/id/timeline (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Idaho Constitution of 1889. Art. VI, § 2 (qualifications of electors, as amended for woman suffrage in 1896); art. VI, § 3 (disqualification of certain persons). Idaho State Legislature. https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ (accessed 25 July 2026).

Territorial and State Codes and Compilations

• The Compiled and Revised Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Boise: Milton Kelly, Territorial Printer, 1875. The general laws in force at the eighth session, and the compilation the 1887 revisers cite in their margins for the husband-and-wife and conveyancing chapters. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revisedlawsofidaho00 (accessed 25 July 2026).
• The Compiled Statutes of Idaho. Vol. 2. Compiled by B. W. Oppenheim, Code Commissioner, and revised by I. W. Hart. Boise: Syms-York, 1919. The compilation between the 1908 codes and the Idaho Code Annotated of 1932. Each section is printed with the 1908 section number in brackets, which makes it the volume to use for tracing a rule across the 1919 line — it is how the disappearance of the married woman's joinder sections can be seen. Marriage, incest, and the mixed-marriage section run at §§ 4591–4596; husband and wife at §§ 4650–4668; transfers of real property at §§ 5373 following. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/idcompstatutes00oppen (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Idaho Code: Containing the General Laws of Idaho Annotated. 12 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948. Adopted in 1947 and published the following year under the Idaho Code Commission; the compilation that closes the period covered here, cited in the notes at its 32- series section numbers. The Michie Company later carried the code forward, so catalog records for 1948 volumes appear under both publishers.
• Idaho Code Annotated. 4 vols. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932. The compilation in force through the 1930s and the source of the 2- and 31- series section numbers cited in the notes. It is not digitized on the Internet Archive or HathiTrust; consult a printed set or a law library.
• General Laws of the Territory of Idaho, including the Code of Civil Procedure. Eleventh session. Boise City: A. J. Boyakin, Territorial Printer, 1881. The session convened 13 December 1880 and adjourned 10 February 1881; the code took effect at noon on 21 May 1881. The immediate source of most of the procedure, evidence, jury, probate, guardianship, and will provisions later renumbered into the Revised Statutes of 1887 and the second volume of the Revised Codes of 1908, whose history lines cite it as "C. C. P. 1881" many hundreds of times. Witness competency is at § 898. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid01tergoog (accessed 8 August 2026).
• Idaho Statutes and Constitution. Idaho State Legislature. The current code prints a history line after each section that chains back through the compilations. https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• The Revised Codes of Idaho. Vol. 1, Political and Civil. Prepared by John F. MacLane, Code Commissioner. Boise: Syms-York Co., 1908. Majority, marriage, community property and married women, dower and curtesy, legitimation, conveyancing, alien land, and the revenue and poll-tax titles, each section printed with its history line and the parallel California provision. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/idahorevisedcode00idah (accessed 25 July 2026).
• The Revised Codes of Idaho. Vol. 2, Civil Procedure and Penal. Prepared by John F. MacLane, Code Commissioner. Boise: Syms-York Co., 1908. Wills and succession, which Idaho placed in the Code of Civil Procedure rather than the Civil Code; guardianship, executors, witness competency, jury qualifications, and criminal capacity. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revcodofidaho02maclane (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Revised Statutes of Idaho Territory. Boise City: Printed for the Territory, 1887. Enacted at the fourteenth territorial session and in force 1 June 1887; the foundational codification, and the volume every later history line points back to. The territory is the publisher and Henry Gibson of Omaha the printer. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso00idah (accessed 25 July 2026).

Session Laws

• General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1905. Boise: Statesman Printing Company, 1905. H.B. 114, the delinquent-children act, 106–113. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/genlawsidaho05idstate (accessed 25 July 2026).
• General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1921. Boise: Secretary of State, 1921. Ch. 115, amending the mixed-marriage section; ch. 221, requiring written and acknowledged parental consent below eighteen. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/genlawstofidaho21secstate (accessed 25 July 2026).
• General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1923. Boise: Syms-York Company, 1923. Ch. 122, the Alien Land Law, 160–165. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/genlawsidaho23idstate (accessed 25 July 2026).
• General Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Thirteenth session. Boise City: Jas. A. Pinney, Territorial Printer, 1885. The session convened 8 December 1884 and adjourned 5 February 1885. The community-property amendment at 137 and the road poll tax at 162. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid06idahgoog (accessed 25 July 2026).
• General Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Fifteenth session. Boise City: James A. Pinney, Territorial Printer, 1889. The session convened 10 December 1888 and adjourned 7 February 1889. Two acts relied on here: the marriage act at 44, which raised the marrying age for women from sixteen to eighteen, and the poll-tax act at 7, which dropped the upper age from sixty to fifty and widened the exemptions. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid01idahgoog (accessed 25 July 2026).
• General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1943. Ch. 50, at 96–97, approved 15 February 1943, the last change to the marriage-age and consent rules inside this period; ch. 158, at 320, the jury act. Digital images. HathiTrust. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683677 (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Idaho Session Laws, 1959. Ch. 44, at 89, striking the racial half of the mixed-marriage section. The Idaho Legislature posts its session-law volumes back to 1945 as searchable PDFs. https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/sessionlaws/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Laws, Memorials and Resolutions passed by the Fourth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Idaho. Boise City: Frank Kenyon, Territorial Printer, 1867. The session convened 3 December 1866. The pivotal territorial volume: the marriage act at 71 — incest, the race bar, and recognition of out-of-territory marriages — and the husband-and-wife act at 65, which brought in community property and abolished dower and curtesy. Guardianship at 30–31. The fourth session alone in the run was published under this title rather than as Laws of the Territory of Idaho, which is why it is easily missed. It is not digitized; consult a printed set of the territorial session laws.
• Laws of the Territory of Idaho. First session. Lewiston: James A. Glascock, Territorial Printer, 1864. The session convened 7 December 1863 and adjourned 4 February 1864 at Lewiston, the first capital. The original mixed-marriage act at 604, the marriage act at 613, and the age-of-majority provision at 515. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid00tergoog (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Third session. Boise City: Frank Kenyon, Territorial Printer, 1866. The session convened 4 December 1865 and adjourned 12 January 1866. Listed here as a caution: the Internet Archive files this volume under the bare series title with a date of 1866, where it is easily mistaken for the fourth session, and it carries no marriage, dower, curtesy, or community-property act. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid02tergoog (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Seventh session. Boise City: Territorial Printer, 1873. Shows that the practice acts of 1864 were still the operative law as late as January 1873: the act at 25 amends § 120 of the civil practice act approved 15 December 1864, and the act at 45–46 amends § 12 of the crimes act approved 21 December 1864 without disturbing the racial testimony bar at § 13. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid02idahgoog (accessed 8 August 2026).
• Laws of the Territory of Idaho. Ninth session. Boise City: Milton Kelly, Territorial Printer, 1877. The session convened 4 December 1876 and adjourned 12 January 1877. The marriage act at 24 — what constitutes marriage, including the mutual-assumption route that made Idaho a common-law-marriage state, the marrying ages, and legitimation by the parents' later marriage. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid04idahgoog (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Acts cited in the notes that have no separately digitized volume in this run, each to be read in the session volume for its year: the alien-land acts of 1890–91, 108 and 118, and 1899, 70; the revenue and poll-tax acts of 1893, 131, 1899, 215, and 1901, 233, 297 and 298; the married-women's act of 1903, 345, which gave a wife the management of her own separate property and repealed the sections that had given it to her husband; the succession amendment of 1907, 338, which cut the brothers and sisters out of a childless widow's estate; the abolition of common-law marriage by the act of 1995, ch. 104; and the equalization of the age of majority by the act of 1972, ch. 117, 233.

Court Cases

• Grice v. Woodworth. 10 Idaho 459, 80 P. 912 (1904). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337414/grice-v-woodworth/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• N. W. & Pacific Hypotheek Bank v. Rauch. 5 Idaho 752, 51 P. 764 (1898).
• Powell v. Spackman. 7 Idaho 692, 65 P. 503 (1901). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337160/powell-v-spackman/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Scott v. Harkness. 6 Idaho 736, 59 P. 556 (1899). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337041/scott-v-harkness/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• State v. Kelley. 39 Idaho 668, 229 P. 659 (1924). https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3416008/state-v-kelley/ (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Wilkins v. Wilkins. 137 Idaho 315, 48 P.3d 644 (2002). After this period, but it confirms that common-law marriages formed before 1 January 1996 remain valid.

Secondary and Reference Works

• "Courthouse Records." Idaho: Local History and Genealogy Resource Guide. Library of Congress. What the counties hold and where the transferred series have gone. https://guides.loc.gov/idaho-local-history-genealogy/courthouse-records (accessed 25 July 2026).
• de Funiak, William Q., and Michael J. Vaughn. Principles of Community Property. 2nd ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1971. Traces the system's civil-law origins and its adoption across the western states.
• "Idaho, County Marriages." FamilySearch Research Wiki. Establishes what the county marriage files actually contain — certificates before 1895, licenses and applications after, with the parental consent for an under-age party filed in the application. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Idaho,_County_Marriages_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records (accessed 25 July 2026).
• McMurtrie, Douglas C. A Short-title Check List of Books, Pamphlets, and Broadsides Printed in Idaho. 1938. Transcribes the territorial imprints line by line, and is the standard finding aid for Idaho's early session-law volumes, including the fourth-session volume, which is not digitized.
• Putnam, Carlton B. How to Find the Law. 1949. Lists each state's codes with publisher and volume count as they stood in the 1940s; useful for placing the 1932 and 1948 Idaho compilations, alongside the bibliography in the Inventory of the County Archives of Idaho (Historical Records Survey, 1940–41).
• Southeast Idaho Nikkei Project. "Alien Land Law." On the 1923 Idaho Alien Land Law and its effect on Japanese farming families. https://sites.google.com/isu.edu/seidaho-nikkei-project/blog-posts/alien-land-law (accessed 25 July 2026).
• Idaho State Tax Commission. History of Property Tax in Idaho. EPB00106. A year-by-year list of Idaho tax legislation from the territorial period forward; the source used here for the 1911 change requiring road taxes to be paid in money and for the 1931 income tax. https://tax.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/pubs/EPB00106/EPB00106_10-18-2022.pdf (accessed 8 August 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America. Bulletin 157 series. The Idaho report digests majority, married women's property, dower and curtesy, wills, intestacy, guardianship, marriage, and jury service with citations to the then-current code; use it as a cross-check and confirm each citation against the statute. HathiTrust. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011418496 (accessed 25 July 2026).

Citations

1. The Revised Codes of Idaho, vol. 1, Political and Civil (Boise: Syms-York Co., 1908), § 18, "Common law in force"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/idahorevisedcode00idah : accessed 25 July 2026). The section is carried without change from Revised Statutes of Idaho Territory (Boise City: Printed for the Territory, 1887), § 18; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso00idah : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
2. Revised Codes of 1908, §§ 2676–2687, the husband-and-wife title, each section printed with the parallel California provision beneath it. The civil-law descent of the system is traced in de Funiak and Vaughn, Principles of Community Property (see the Source List). ↩
3. The Revised Codes of Idaho, vol. 2, Civil Procedure and Penal (Boise: Syms-York Co., 1908). The history line printed beneath each section cites the Code of Civil Procedure of 1881 — abbreviated "C. C. P. 1881" — several hundred times; see, for example, § 3941 ("C. C. P. 1881, Sec. 79"), § 3942 ("Sec. 80"), and § 5957 ("Sec. 898"). The 1881 code was enacted at the eleventh territorial session. digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revcodofidaho02maclane : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
4. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2601, "Minors defined" (males under twenty-one, females under eighteen); carried from the act of the first territorial session, Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (Lewiston: James A. Glascock, Territorial Printer, 1864), 515; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid00tergoog : accessed 25 July 2026); and through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2405, the Compiled Statutes of 1919, § 4583, and the Idaho Code Annotated (1932), § 31-101. Idaho equalized the age of majority at eighteen for both sexes by the act of 1972, ch. 117, § 1, p. 233, in force 1 July 1972, outside the period of this guide. ↩
5. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2603 (a minor's contract made while he is under eighteen may be disaffirmed before majority or within a reasonable time after; one made while he is over eighteen may be disaffirmed only on restoring the consideration or paying its equivalent); §§ 2604–2605 (no disaffirmance of a contract for necessaries, or of an obligation entered into under statutory authority); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2407–2409. ↩
6. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2611, "What constitutes marriage"; carried from the territorial marriage act, Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 9th sess. (Boise City: Milton Kelly, Territorial Printer, 1877), 24, § 1, whose § 1 carries the words relied on here and whose § 2 sets the marrying ages at eighteen and sixteen; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid04idahgoog : accessed 25 July 2026). Carried through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2420. ↩
7. Idaho abolished common-law marriage by the act of 1995, ch. 104, § 3; § 6 of that act put it in force on and after 1 January 1996. The codified section, Idaho Code § 32-201, runs from the act of the ninth territorial session (1877), 24, § 1, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2420, the Revised Codes of 1908, § 2611, the Compiled Statutes of 1919, § 4591, and the Idaho Code Annotated (1932), § 31-201. Unions formed before the abolition remained valid: Wilkins v. Wilkins, 137 Idaho 315, 48 P.3d 644 (2002). ↩
8. Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2421 (an unmarried male of eighteen and an unmarried female of sixteen are capable of consenting to and consummating marriage); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedstatuteso00idah : accessed 25 July 2026). The same ages are set by the ninth-session marriage act of 1877, 24, § 2, and the 1908 code's history line points back beyond it to Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (1864), 613, § 2. ↩
9. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2612, "Persons who may marry" (eighteen for both sexes). The section's own history line runs from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2421, as amended by the act of the fifteenth territorial session, General Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 15th sess. (1889), 44, "An act to amend sections 2421, 2434, 2435, 2437 and 2440 of the Revised Statutes of Idaho, relating to the contract of marriage," whose amended § 2421 sets eighteen for both sexes and so raised the female age from sixteen. The section continued as Compiled Statutes, § 4592, and Idaho Code Annotated (1932), § 31-202, and was amended by the acts of 1921, ch. 221, and 1943, ch. 50. ↩
10. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2621 (the officiant must be assured that the parties are of sufficient age, and, if the male or the female is under eighteen, that the consent of the father, mother, or guardian is given, or that the under-age party has been married before); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2430, where the figures were eighteen for a male and sixteen for a female, and moving with the marriage age when the fifteenth territorial session amended it in 1889. ↩
11. General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1921 (Boise: Secretary of State, 1921), ch. 221 (H.B. 138), approved 14 March 1921, amending Compiled Statutes, § 4592; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/genlawstofidaho21secstate : accessed 25 July 2026). The act kept eighteen for both sexes and added a proviso that where either party is under eighteen the license shall not issue except on the consent in writing, duly acknowledged or sworn to, of the father, mother, or guardian. ↩
12. General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1943, ch. 50, at 96–97, approved 15 February 1943, amending the marriage-age section: unmarried males and females of 18 or upward are capable of marrying; where either party is under 18 and not less than 15, the license issues only on the written consent of the father, mother, or guardian, duly acknowledged and sworn to; and where the female is under 15, only on that consent and an order of the probate court, granted on a petition showing that she is so far developed physically or mentally as to assume full marital and parental duties, or that the marriage is in the best interest of society, at a hearing to which the judge must subpoena the county physician. A certified copy of the order is filed with the county recorder as his authority to issue the license. Digital images, HathiTrust (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3683677 : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
13. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2629 (the county recorder may issue marriage licenses); § 2631 (the recorder must know the parties are competent to marry or take their affidavit in writing); § 2630 (the officiant returns the license and certificate within thirty days); § 2635 (the recorder records the returns in a book kept for the purpose). The licensing chapter entered the law with the act of 1895, 166, and was re-enacted by the act of 1899, 278. ↩
14. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2623 (the parties must declare, in the presence of the person solemnizing the marriage, that they take each other as husband and wife); § 2634 (penalty on a minister or officer who solemnizes a marriage without a license or knowing a party incompetent — a penalty that came in with the licensing act of 1895, 166, § 6). Before 1895 the officiant gave the parties a certificate and the county recorder recorded it: Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2436, 2440. ↩
15. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2615, "Incestuous marriages"; carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 71, § 2, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2424, and standing unchanged as Compiled Statutes, § 4595. The cousin prohibition sat in the neighboring section; see the note on the act of 1921 below. ↩
16. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2617, "Polygamous marriages" (a later marriage contracted during the life of a former husband or wife is illegal and void from the beginning unless the former marriage has been annulled or dissolved, or unless the former spouse was absent and not known to be living for five successive years immediately preceding, or was generally reputed and believed by that person to be dead when the later marriage was contracted, in either of which cases the later marriage is valid until its nullity is adjudged by a competent tribunal); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2426. ↩
17. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2614, "When voidable"; carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 9th sess. (1877), 24, § 4, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2423. ↩
18. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2619, "Recognition of foreign marriages"; carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 71, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2428. ↩
19. Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (1864), 604, "An Act to prohibit Marriages and Cohabitation of Whites with Indians, Chinese and persons of African descent," § 1 (a white person who intermarries with a person of African descent, an Indian, or a Chinese is guilty of a misdemeanor) and § 2 (like penalty on the officiant). The fourth territorial session recast the prohibition in the civil form that carried into every later code, at 71, § 3 of Laws, Memorials and Resolutions passed by the Fourth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Idaho (Boise City: Frank Kenyon, Territorial Printer, 1867) — the same act declaring incestuous marriages void at § 2 and out-of-territory marriages valid at § 5. The derivation is confirmed by the history lines printed beneath Revised Codes of 1908, §§ 2615, 2616 and 2619, which cite the session as "4 Ter. Ses. (1867)." The fourth-session volume is not digitized; read the acts in a printed set of the territorial session laws. ↩
20. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2616 (declaring illegal and void all marriages between a white person and a person of African descent; the section heading and the text both use the racial terms current at the time); carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 71, § 3, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2425. ↩
21. General Laws of Idaho, 1921, ch. 115 (H.B. 3), 291, approved 1 March 1921. The act rewrote Compiled Statutes, § 4596, in a single sentence carrying two rules: that marriages thereafter contracted between a white person and a person of Asian or African descent are illegal and void, and that all marriages between first cousins are prohibited. The section runs on into the Idaho Code Annotated (1932), § 31-206, and the Idaho Code (1948), § 32-206. ↩
22. Idaho Session Laws, 1959, ch. 44 (H.B. 18), 89, approved 2 March 1959, amending Idaho Code § 32-206 by deleting the provision that had made interracial marriages illegal and void. What the amendment left standing is the whole of the present section: all marriages between first cousins are prohibited. Digital images, Idaho State Legislature (https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessionlaws/sessionlaws_1959.pdf : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
23. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2676 (the wife's separate property), § 2679 (the husband's separate property), and § 2680 (all other property acquired after marriage, including the rents and profits of both separate estates, is community property). ↩
24. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2680 (all other property acquired after marriage, including the rents and profits of the separate property of both, is community property) read with the 1875 compilation of the husband-and-wife act, § 9 (the rents and profits of either spouse's property are common property, unless in the case of the wife's separate property the instrument bequeathing, devising, or giving it to her provides that the rents and profits be applied to her sole and separate use, in which case she has the management and disposal of them); The Compiled and Revised Laws of the Territory of Idaho (Boise: Milton Kelly, Territorial Printer, 1875); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedlawsofidaho00 : accessed 8 August 2026). On marriage settlements taking priority over the statutory scheme, Revised Codes of 1908, § 2689, and Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2508 (the property rights of husband and wife are governed by this chapter unless there is a marriage settlement containing stipulations contrary to it). ↩
25. Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2498 (the husband has the management and control of the separate property of the wife during the marriage, but no sale or other alienation of any part of it, and no lien or encumbrance on it, can be made except by an instrument in writing signed by husband and wife and acknowledged by her upon an examination separate and apart from the husband, as upon a conveyance of real estate); § 2499 (a trustee appointed on her application where the husband mismanages or wastes her estate). The married women's act of 1903, 345, expressly repealed both sections, a repeal recorded in the note printed beneath Revised Codes of 1908, § 2677. ↩
26. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2676, "Separate property of wife" (hers "to the same extent and with the same effect, as the property of a husband similarly acquired"); carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 65, § 1, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2495, and amended by the act of 1903, 345, § 1. ↩
27. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2677, "Same: Management" (during the marriage the wife has the management, control and absolute power of disposition of her separate property, and may bargain, sell and convey her real and personal property, and contract about it, in the same manner and to the same extent and with like effect as a married man may in relation to his). The section is not old territorial law: it comes from the married women's act of 1903, 345, § 2, and carries into the Compiled Statutes of 1919, § 4657. ↩ ↩
28. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2687 (no estate is allowed the husband as tenant by curtesy on the death of his wife, nor any estate in dower allotted to the wife on the death of her husband); carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 65, § 10, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2506. ↩
29. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2686 (the husband has the management and control of the community property, with the like absolute power of disposition as of his separate estate, except the homestead and the part of the common property used as a residence); carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 65, § 9, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2505. ↩
30. Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2921 (no conveyance or encumbrance of community real property or of the homestead is valid unless both husband and wife join in it and the wife acknowledges it), carried into the real-property title of the Revised Codes of 1908 as § 3106, whose history line reads "Rev. St. 1887, Sec. 2921." ↩
31. Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2922 (no estate in the real property of a married woman passes by a grant purporting to be executed by her unless she acknowledges it and her husband, if a resident of the Territory, joins in it); reaching back to Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 8th sess. (1875), 596, §§ 2–3, and 4th sess. (1867), 138, §§ 1–2. The 1908 codifiers reprinted it as Revised Codes of 1908, § 3107, alongside the 1903 act, and it is annotated there with N. W. & Pac. Hypotheek Bank v. Rauch, 5 Idaho 752, 51 P. 764 (1898), and Grice v. Woodworth, 10 Idaho 459, 80 P. 912 (1904) (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337414/grice-v-woodworth/ : accessed 25 July 2026), the latter a homestead case rather than a separate-property one. ↩
32. Revised Codes of 1908, § 3108 (if her husband has not been a bona fide resident of the State at any time within the year next preceding her conveyance, a married woman may convey her separate real property by an instrument subscribed and acknowledged by her alone); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2923. ↩
33. The joinder rule left the statute books at the next compilation. The Compiled Statutes of Idaho (Boise: Syms-York, 1919) runs the transfer-of-real-property article straight through § 5373, which is the 1908 § 3105, to § 5374, which is the 1908 § 3110; the 1908 §§ 3106–3109, the married woman's conveyance sections among them, are dropped from the sequence. Digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/idcompstatutes00oppen : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
34. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2681, "Inventory of wife's property," and § 2682, "Same: Effect"; carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2500–2501 (inventory of separate property of wife; filing inventory notice of wife's title), and reaching back to the husband-and-wife act of the fourth territorial session, Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 65, §§ 3–5, as compiled in The Compiled and Revised Laws of the Territory of Idaho (1875), §§ 3–5 (the filing of the inventory in the recorder's office is notice of the title of the wife, and all property belonging to her is exempt from seizure or execution for the debts of her husband). The 1908 codifiers list the record among the recorder's duties at the head of the recording title. ↩
35. Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 2509–2512 (all contracts for marriage settlements must be in writing and executed and acknowledged or proved in like manner as conveyances of land; when acknowledged or proved the contract must be recorded in the office of the recorder of every county in which any real estate granted or affected by it is situated; recording imparts notice; and minors may make marriage settlements); carried into Revised Codes of 1908, §§ 2691–2693, with the cross-reference to the recorder's duties at § 2691. ↩
36. Revised Codes of 1908, § 3153 (before an instrument may be recorded its execution must be acknowledged by the person executing it, or proved, and the acknowledgment or proof certified). ↩
37. Revised Codes of 1908, § 3156 (instruments entitled to be recorded must be recorded by the county recorder of the county in which the real property lies); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2997, and reaching back to Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (1864), 528, § 23. ↩
38. Revised Codes of 1908, § 3136 (proof of the execution of an unacknowledged instrument may be made by a party to it or by a subscribing witness); § 3137 (the witness must be personally known to the officer or proved to be the witness by the oath of a credible witness); § 3138 (the subscribing witness must prove that the person named is the person who executed it and that the witness signed as a witness). ↩
39. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2609 (no person other than a citizen of the United States, or one who has declared his intention to become such, and no association or corporation except railway corporations whose members are not exclusively such, shall hereafter acquire any land or title or interest in it other than mineral lands; all land so acquired must be sold within five years after the title is perfected or it reverts and escheats to the state; with provisos preserving the rights of lienholders and of alien widows and heirs taking by inheritance). Historical line: the act of 1899, 70, § 1, re-enacting the act of 1890–91, 108, § 1. digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/idahorevisedcode00idah : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
40. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2610, "Same: Mining claims" (any person, whether citizen or alien, may take, hold and dispose of mining claims and mining property). ↩
41. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2609, second proviso (no person ineligible to become a citizen of the United States may acquire title to any land or real property in the state), and § 2610, proviso (persons of Chinese or other Asian descent not born in the United States are not permitted to acquire title to land or any real property under that section and the preceding ones). The mining proviso rests on the act of 1899, 70, § 2, re-enacting the act of 1890–91, 118, § 1. ↩
42. General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1923 (Boise: Syms-York Company, 1923), ch. 122 (H.B. 108), 160–165, "An Act relating to the rights, powers and disabilities of aliens with respect to property in this state; providing for escheats," approved 9 March 1923; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/genlawsidaho23idstate : accessed 25 July 2026). Section 1 protects aliens eligible to citizenship; § 2 confines aliens ineligible to citizenship to the rights allowed by treaty and to term-limited agricultural leases. Compare Oyama v. California, 332 U.S. 633 (1948). ↩
43. The Revised Codes of Idaho, vol. 2, Civil Procedure and Penal (Boise: Syms-York Co., 1908), § 5701 (the property of one who dies without disposing of it by will passes to the heirs of the intestate, subject to the control of the probate court and to administration); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revcodofidaho02maclane : accessed 25 July 2026). Carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5701. ↩
44. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5702, "Succession to property," subdivisions 1–5; carried from the Probate Practice Act of 1864, § 315, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5702, and amended by the act of 1907, 338, § 1. The amendment is what moved the last two rows of the table. In the 1887 text, subdivision 2 gave the decedent's brothers and sisters half the estate where a spouse survived and no parent did, and subdivision 4 gave the spouse the whole estate only where there was also no brother or sister; the 1907 act struck the brothers and sisters out of both subdivisions. The one-half and one-third shares in the first two rows stand unchanged in both texts. ↩ ↩
45. Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 65, § 11, as compiled in The Compiled and Revised Laws of the Territory of Idaho (1875), § 11 (upon the dissolution of the community by the death of either husband or wife, one-half of the common property goes to the survivor and the other half to the descendants of the deceased, the whole subject to the payment of the debts of the deceased; if there be no descendants, the whole to the survivor); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedlawsofidaho00 : accessed 8 August 2026). Carried as Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5713, until the amendment of 1907, 346, § 1. ↩
46. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5713 (on the death of either spouse one-half of the community goes to the survivor subject to the community debts, the other half is subject to the decedent's testamentary disposition, and in default of a will that half descends equally to the legitimate issue; if no issue or their representatives survive, the whole community passes to the survivor to the exclusion of collateral heirs). The section's history line reads "Rev. St. 1887, Sec. 5713; amended Laws 1907, 346, Sec. 1," so this text governs deaths between the 1907 amendment and the amendment of 1911. ↩
47. The Compiled Statutes of Idaho (Boise: Syms-York, 1919), § 7803, "Devolution of community property" (upon the death of either husband or wife one-half of all the community property goes to the survivor subject to the community debts, and the other half is subject to the testamentary disposition of the deceased spouse in favor only of his, her, or their children or a parent of either spouse, provided that not more than one-half of the decedent's half may be left by will to a parent or parents; and in case no such testamentary disposition has been made, that half goes to the survivor subject to the community debts, the family allowance, and the charges and expenses of administration, with no administration of the wife's estate necessary if she dies intestate). The history line reads "R. S. § 5713; am. '07, p. 346, § 1, reen. R. C. § 5713; am. '11, c. 13, § 1, p. 29," and the annotation printed with the section explains that the purpose of the 1911 amendment was to reduce the number of cases in which community estates would be dissolved on the death of one spouse. digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/idcompstatutes00oppen : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
48. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5703 (every illegitimate child is an heir of the person who, in writing signed in the presence of a competent witness, acknowledges himself to be the father, and is in all cases an heir of its mother, inheriting as if born in lawful wedlock, "but he does not represent his father or mother by inheriting any part of the estate of his or her kindred, either lineal or collateral, unless before his death, his parents shall have intermarried, and his father, after such marriage, acknowledges him as his child or adopts him into his family"); § 5704 (the mother succeeds to an unacknowledged illegitimate child dying intestate without issue); carried from the Probate Practice Act of 1864, § 316, through Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 5703–5704. ↩
49. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2699 (a child born before wedlock is legitimated by the subsequent marriage of its parents); carried from Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 9th sess. (1877), 24, § 21, through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 2535, as the 1908 history line records. ↩
50. Revised Codes of 1908, § 2709, "Adoption of illegitimate child" (the father who publicly acknowledges the child and receives it into his family, with the consent of his wife if he is married, makes it legitimate from the time of its birth). ↩
51. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5771 (if the minor is under fourteen the probate court may nominate and appoint his guardian; if he is above fourteen he may nominate his own, subject to the court's approval); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5771. ↩
52. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5776 (every guardian appointed shall have the custody and care of the education of the minor, and the care and management of his estate, until such minor arrives at the age of majority or marries, or until the guardian is legally discharged); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5776, and reaching back to Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 4th sess. (1867), 31, § 7. ↩
53. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5725, "Who may make a will" (every person over eighteen, of sound mind, may by last will dispose of all his estate, real and personal); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5725. ↩
54. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5727, "Execution of will" (subscribed at the end by the testator or by another in his presence and by his direction, and attested by two witnesses signing at his request and in his presence). ↩
55. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5728, "Olographic wills" (entirely written, dated and signed by the hand of the testator, subject to no other form, and need not be witnessed); § 5307 (an olographic will may be proved as other private writings are proved). ↩
56. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5726 (a married woman may dispose of all her separate estate by will without her husband's consent, but her will "must be attested, witnessed, and proved in like manner as all other wills"); and Scott v. Harkness, 6 Idaho 736, 59 P. 556 (1899) (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337041/scott-v-harkness/ : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
57. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5729, "Requirements as to witnesses" (a witness must write his place of residence with his name, but a violation does not affect the validity of the will); § 5730 (subscribing witnesses competent when they attest do not spoil the will by later incompetency). ↩
58. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5341, "Qualifications of executors" (no person is competent to serve as executor who, when the will is admitted to probate, is under the age of majority, convicted of an infamous crime, or adjudged incompetent for drunkenness, improvidence, or want of understanding or integrity). The parallel section for an administrator, § 5355, adds a residence requirement. ↩
59. Revised Codes of 1908, § 1643, "Property subject to taxation" (all property in the State not exempt under the laws of the United States is subject to taxation); § 1644 (exemptions). ↩
60. Revised Codes of 1908, § 1652 (all taxable property must be assessed at its full cash value, and lands and the improvements on them assessed separately); resting on the revenue act of 1901, 233, § 10, and reaching back through Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1425, as amended by the act of 1893, 131, § 1, and re-enacted by the act of 1899, 215, § 1. ↩
61. Revised Statutes of 1887, § 1600 (every male inhabitant of the Territory over twenty-one and under sixty years of age, except paupers, insane persons, Indians not taxed, and actively enrolled members of any volunteer fire company, must annually pay a poll tax of three dollars, or three dollars and fifty cents if not paid before the second Monday in November); §§ 1601–1619 (assessment, collection, the poll-tax book, and division of the proceeds). ↩
62. General Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 15th sess. (Boise City: James A. Pinney, Territorial Printer, 1889), 7, "An Act to regulate the ages between which a person shall be liable for poll taxes, the time when they shall become delinquent and the exemption of certain classes," § 1 (every male inhabitant of the Territory over twenty-one and under fifty years of age, except paupers, insane persons, Indians not taxed, government pensioners, actively enrolled members of any volunteer fire company, and persons permanently disabled so as not to be able to perform manual labor, must annually pay a poll tax of three dollars, or three dollars and fifty cents after the second Monday in December); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid01idahgoog : accessed 25 July 2026). This is the act the 1908 code names in the pointer printed at the head of its own poll-tax chapter. ↩
63. Revised Codes of 1908, § 1842 (every male inhabitant of the State over twenty-one and under fifty, except paupers, insane persons, Indians not taxed, government pensioners, enrolled active members of volunteer fire companies, persons permanently disabled from manual labor, and honorably discharged soldiers, must annually pay a poll tax of two dollars, or two dollars and fifty cents if paid after the second Monday in January); Historical: the act of 1901, 298, § 1; §§ 1845–1861 (the poll-tax book, receipts, and the rule that a name once entered is struck only by order of the county commissioners); the chapter opens with a note pointing back to Revised Statutes of 1887, §§ 1600–1619, and to the territorial act of 1888–89, 7. ↩
64. Revised Codes of 1908, § 894 (every male inhabitant of a road district over twenty-one and under fifty must perform two days' labor annually as the road poll tax); §§ 886, 892 (collection); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 880, which fixed the buy-out at four dollars or such smaller sum as the county commissioners set, and reaching back to General Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 13th sess. (Boise City: Jas. A. Pinney, Territorial Printer, 1885), 162, § 20; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid06idahgoog : accessed 25 July 2026); amended by the act of 1901, 297, § 1. ↩
65. Idaho State Tax Commission, History of Property Tax in Idaho, EPB00106, entry for 1911 (required all future road taxes to be paid in money, discontinuing payment by working on the road) (https://tax.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/pubs/EPB00106/EPB00106_10-18-2022.pdf : accessed 8 August 2026). The road poll tax itself survived: The Compiled Statutes of Idaho (1919) carries it at § 1312, with collection in contract road districts at § 1332 and the delinquent and filed lists at §§ 1336–1337. ↩
66. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 1, title 10, ch. 5, "Transfer tax on successions, legacies and devises." ↩
67. The act of 1912, ch. 2, § 2, p. 6, approved 27 January 1912. The Compiled Statutes of Idaho (1919) lists it among the acts left in force by the compilation, described there as the "Saving clause in repeal of poll tax law"; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/idcompstatutes00oppen : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
68. Idaho State Tax Commission, History of Property Tax in Idaho, EPB00106, entry for 1931 (enacted the Property Tax Relief Act, with the property tax levy for state funding to be reduced by the amount of the revenue raised from the new income tax, and creating the office of the Tax Commissioner to administer the income tax) (https://tax.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/pubs/EPB00106/EPB00106_10-18-2022.pdf : accessed 8 August 2026). ↩
69. Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (Lewiston: James A. Glascock, Territorial Printer, 1864), 589, "An Act concerning Jurors," § 9 (any person who is a qualified voter in this territory shall be competent to serve as a grand or petit juror), with the exemptions at § 10; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid00tergoog : accessed 8 August 2026). The franchise it drew on is that of the Organic Act creating Idaho Territory, printed at the front of the same volume, which gave the vote at the first election to every free white male inhabitant above the age of twenty-one who was an actual resident when the act passed, and left later qualifications to the legislative assembly. ↩
70. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 3941, "Qualifications of jurors" (a citizen of the United States and an elector of the county, in possession of his natural faculties and not decrepit, with sufficient knowledge of the language in which the courts hold their proceedings); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 3941, at the same number, with the disqualifications at § 3942, and continuing as Compiled Statutes, § 6518, and Idaho Code Annotated (1932), § 2-201, until the act of 1943, ch. 158, § 3, p. 320. ↩
71. Idaho Const. of 1889, art. VI, § 2, "Qualifications of electors," as amended by the woman-suffrage amendment of November 1896. ↩
72. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 3942, "Disqualification of jurors" (a person who lacks the qualifications of the preceding section, or who has been convicted of a felony or of a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude). ↩
73. Idaho women became electors, and so on the face of the jury statute eligible jurors, by the woman-suffrage amendment to Idaho Const. of 1889, art. VI, § 2, adopted November 1896. State v. Kelley, 39 Idaho 668, 229 P. 659 (1924) (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3416008/state-v-kelley/ : accessed 25 July 2026), held that the vote and jury duty are separate things — the one a right guaranteed by the constitution, the other a duty fixed by statute — so a woman elector was not thereby a juror. The bar came down with the act of 1943, ch. 158, p. 320, which wrote "men or women or both" into the jury sections and amended the competency section at § 3. ↩
74. Idaho Const. of 1889, art. VI, § 3, "Disqualification of certain persons" (no Chinese, or person of Mongolian descent not born in the United States, nor Indian not taxed who has not severed tribal relations and adopted the habits of civilization, may vote, serve as a juror, or hold civil office); and Powell v. Spackman, 7 Idaho 692, 65 P. 503 (1901) (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/5337160/powell-v-spackman/ : accessed 25 July 2026). ↩
75. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 6330 (all persons are capable of committing crimes except, among others, children under the age of fourteen, in the absence of clear proof that at the time of committing the act they knew its wrongfulness); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 6330, at the same number. ↩
76. General Laws of the State of Idaho, 1905 (Boise: Statesman Printing Company, 1905), 106–113, H.B. 114, "An Act to Provide for the Care of Delinquent Children," approved 6 March 1905; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/genlawsidaho05idstate : accessed 25 July 2026). Section 1 limits the act to children sixteen years of age or under and defines a delinquent child as one of that age who violates a law or ordinance or is incorrigible. ↩
77. Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 1st sess. (1864), 156–157, Civil Practice Act, § 352 (the following persons shall not be witnesses: those of unsound mind at the time of their production for examination; children under ten years of age who in the opinion of the court appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts or of relating them truly; Chinese people or those having one-half or more Chinese ancestry, Native people or those having one-half or more Native ancestry, and Black people or those having one-half or more African ancestry, in an action or proceeding to which a white person is a party; and persons against whom judgment has been rendered upon a conviction for felony unless pardoned or the judgment reversed), and § 353 (neither husband nor wife a witness for or against the other). The parallel criminal provision is at 437, § 13, which barred the same classes from giving evidence for or against any white person and defined the racial categories by blood fraction. digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid00tergoog : accessed 8 August 2026). The bar was still law as late as the seventh session: the act of 8 January 1873 amended § 12 of the crimes act — the section immediately before the racial bar — and left § 13 standing, and the act of 31 December 1872 amended the civil practice act of 15 December 1864 without touching § 352; Laws of the Territory of Idaho, 7th sess. (1873), 25 and 45–46; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsterritoryid02idahgoog : accessed 8 August 2026). The eighth session removed it by replacing both acts: "An Act to regulate proceedings in criminal cases in the courts of justice in the Territory of Idaho," approved 14 January 1875, and "An Act to regulate proceedings in civil cases in the courts of justice in the Territory of Idaho," approved 15 January 1875, the latter running to § 667 and stating the opposite principle at § 617 (all persons without exception, other than as specified in the next two sections, who having organs of sense can perceive and perceiving can make known their perceptions to others, may be witnesses; therefore neither parties nor other interested persons are excluded, nor those who have been convicted of crime, nor persons on account of their opinions on matters of religious belief), with the three surviving grounds at § 618; The Compiled and Revised Laws of the Territory of Idaho (Boise: Milton Kelly, Territorial Printer, 1875), §§ 617–618; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/revisedlawsofidaho00 : accessed 8 August 2026). No racial language survives anywhere in the 1875 compilation. The same three grounds were carried into the Code of Civil Procedure of 1881, § 898, and from there into Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5957. ↩
78. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5957 (the following persons cannot be witnesses: those of unsound mind at the time of their production for examination, and children under ten years of age who appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts respecting which they are examined, or of relating them truly); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5957. ↩
79. Revised Codes of 1908, vol. 2, § 5958 (a husband cannot be examined for or against his wife without her consent, nor a wife for or against her husband without his, nor either examined without the other's consent as to any communication made between them during the marriage, subject to exceptions); carried from Revised Statutes of 1887, § 5958. ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.