Ann Stewart has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the sum of £50,000. This study assesses the contribution of community-based ‘woman to woman’ marriage practices in Kenya to the provision of care, particularly for the elderly, when there is little social welfare available. The everyday practices of caring for older people particularly women, traditionally woven into communal relations, are changing in the socioeconomic and political circumstances of contemporary Kenya. Are woman to woman marriages, historically understood as a means of tackling infertility, evolving into a way of recognising and ‘rewarding’ caring labour for those with assets? How are claims for recognition understood now in the ‘formal’ courts and within community dispute resolution practices?