Kinship

Most Micronesians lived in some kind of extended family group before European contact. The structure of these groups was presumably somewhat flexible in the majority of places. The relative availability of agricultural land and the need for more laborers on one or the other side of the family were the main factors in determining where newlywed couples chose to reside.

Some couples chose to live with the husband's family, while others chose to do so with the wife's. In the majority of Micronesia, matrilineage was used to determine descent. Although living with the wife's family was considered to be the ideal situation, exceptions were sometimes made in reality, and children commonly had rights to use land that belonged to their paternal grandmother. On the other hand, Yap was seen to be the ideal place for patrilocal living and patrilineal land inheritance.

Members of matrilineages did not customarily get married to people from other branches of the same family. In certain groups, matrilineage membership was regarded as being essentially unchangeable, but real practices may have allowed for some flexibility. A bloodline would typically break into two sections if it became too vast, with one taking on a new name. From that point forward, the two portions would be treated as separate lineages for the purposes of exogamy. When foreigners entered a community, they were frequently accepted into an existing lineage as honorary or fictive members and were required to follow the lineage's exogamy laws.