Also known as the marital privilege, it protects communications privately disclosed between a husband and wife. Either spouse may invoke the privilege and prevent the other from testifying about their private marital communications in a civil or criminal matter. The privilege does not protect non-communicative conduct or actions.

To claim the marital communications privilege, a spouse must show that the communication was made:

The marital communications privilege is different than the adverse spousal testimony privilege (spousal privilege), which typically prevents one spouse from being compelled to testify against the other in a criminal case.