affinity

/afinatiy/ A close agreement; relation; spiritual relation or attraction held to exist between certain persons. State ex inf. Norman v. Ellis, 325 Mo. 154, 28 S.W.2d 363, 367.

Relation which one spouse because of marriage has to blood relatives of the other. State v. Hooper, 140 Kan. 481, 37 P.2d 52.

The connection existing, in consequence of marriage, between each of the married persons and the kindred of the other. Rest v. Lewis, 169 Ohio St. 317, 159 N.E.2d 449,450.

Degrees of relationship by affinity are computed as are degrees of relationship by consanguinity. The doctrine of affinity grew out of the canonical maxim that marriage makes husband and wife one. The husband has the same relation, by affinity, to his wife's blood relatives as she has to them by consanguinity and vice versa. State v. Hooper, 140 Kan. 481, 37 P.2d 52.

Affinity is distinguished into three kinds:

(1) Direct, or that subsisting between the husband and his wife's relations by blood, or between the wife and the husband's relations by blood;

(2) secondary, or that which subsists between the husband and his wife's relations by marriage;

(3) collateral, or that which subsists between the husband and the relations of his wife's relations. In a larger sense, consanguinity or kindred.

Quasi affinity. In the civil law, the affinity which exists between two persons, one of whom has been betrothed to a kinsman of the other, but who have never been married