Cultural rules that oblige individuals to marry the spouse of a deceased relative are exceedingly common and have been an obligatory form of second marriage in a majority of the societies known to anthropology.81 Levirate is a custom whereby a man is obliged to marry his deceased brother’s wife. Sororate obliges a woman to marry her deceased sister’s husband.
Among the Chukchee of Siberia, levirate obliges the next oldest brother to become the successor husband to his brother’s widow. He cares for her and the children, assumes the sexual privileges of the husband, and unites the deceased’s reindeer herd with his own, though he keeps ownership of the herd in the name of his brother’s children. If there are no brothers, the widow is married to a cousin of her first husband. The custom is regarded more as a duty than a right.82