露西·斯通（Lucy Stone）和亨利·布莱克威尔（Henry Blackwell）结婚时，他们抗议当时的法律，当时妇女在结婚后失去了合法存在（coverture），并表示他们不会自愿遵守这些法律。

以下是露西·斯通和亨利·布莱克威尔在1855年5月1日结婚前的签名。牧师。主持婚礼的托马斯·温特沃斯·希金森（Thomas Wentworth Higginson）不仅在仪式上宣读了这份声明，还将其分发给其他部长，作为他敦促其他夫妇效仿的榜样。

While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband: 1. The custody of the wife's person. 2. The exclusive control and guardianship of their children. 3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots. 4. The absolute right to the product of her industry. 5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband. 6. Finally, against the whole system by which "the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage," so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property. We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power... legal status of women and changes over time in related laws.