<![CDATA[The 2019 amendment to Indonesia's Marriage Law set the minimum age of marriage at nineteen and required younger couples to obtain a dispensation from the Religious Court. This article examines how families in Batang Toru District, South Tapanuli Regency, responded to that requirement between 2024 and 2025. Drawing on empirical legal research, namely in-depth interviews, observation, and documentation, it identifies twenty-two couples who contracted sirri marriage rather than apply for dispensation, together with the reasons they gave: procedural complexity, litigation cost, the distance to the court, fear that an application would be refused, low legal literacy, and the conviction that a marriage valid under Islamic law needs no state registration. The stricter age limit, designed to protect children, has instead pushed part of these families into a marriage beyond the reach of the court. The article concludes that the effectiveness of a legal rule is decided finally by the legal culture through which the community reads it, and that legislation which disregards that culture will not deliver the protection it promises.]]>
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