Impediments to marriage are classified according to many different criteria.

It has proved valuable for the discovery of canonical impediments to marriage through relationship, and has given birth to a copious genealogical literature of less comprehensiveness.

The Roman Catholic Church abolished the requirement in 1983, as greater mobility had limited its usefulness as a means of determining whether there were impediments to marriage.

She is sometimes alleged to be a daughter of Stefan Nemanja of Serbia, but this relationship is questionable and would have caused various canonical impediments to marriages between their descendants.

He was inclined to the opinion, generally held in France in his day, that the State had the power to create diriment impediments to marriage among Catholics; but he abandoned it as soon as it was disapproved at Rome.

In the Latin Church, only the Holy See can authentically declare when divine law prohibits or invalidates a marriage, and only the Holy See has the right to establish for those who are baptised other impediments to marriage (canon 1075).

The break between some Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church was over what would constitute an impediment to marriage (the Church of England, for example, recognised remarriage after divorce in some circumstances), rather than over the means by which impediments to marriage should be identified.