Because it deals with this topic specifically in several places, it might be worth going through Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" again. His premise there is that marriage, as all social customs, stems from necessity and the "economics" of any particular circumstance. In that case, marriage customs on the moon evolved from the fact that the moon's population was originally about 90% male. So how would females be treated, and how would marriage have to be reimaged to be workable in that situation?

Taking a step back to "real" situations possible on the planet Earth at this time, I would suggest the candidates should have appropriate mental capacity to understand the majority of possible and potential ramifications to their actions, at the time the marriage is entered into. They should understand the personal and social expectations of the arrangement.

In addition to mental capacity, candidates should have sufficient life experience to be able to judge with reasonable accuracy the actual likliehood of given ramifications.

Looking at social mores throughout history, virtually every example of possible marriage customs has existed. Same gender, mixed orientation, child-marriage, inter-species, inanimate objects has existed somewhere at some point in history. From that perspective, there is no good basis for any restriction whatsoever. Restrictions are placed by the biases of the cultural system the judge of acceptability belong to or chooses to abide by.

I've placed restrictions only on the mental capacity and the experience necessary to effectively wield that capacity, because I believe marriage is meaningless if it lacks meaning or understanding to the members of the marriage (however many and of what type they may be).

There aren't necessarily hard ages or numbers assigned to the above limiting factors, in part because of the need to define the role marriage is serving.

Past the point of intrinsic meaning between participants (else why engage in any activity) as described above we need to revisit Heinlein's question. What is the purpose of marriage? What social function is it serving? Obviously marriage is not a prerequisite for procreation (in a physiological sense), but it might be said to be for the most effective child-rearing, simply because of the ability to divide labor and offer more attention to the child(ren). Because marriage is a social custom, not a physiological response or law of nature, it needs a specific social context to define it. Lacking that, I believe my generally stated qualifications are the only reasonable restrictions applicable across multiple possible social frameworks.
Source(s):
Heinlein, Robert. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" - Science Fiction novel.

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