Didelphidae was named by Gray (1821). It is extant. Its type is Didelphis.

It was corrected as Didelphyidae by Lambe (1908); it was corrected as Didelphiidae by Simpson (1927); it was reranked as the unranked clade Didelphidae by Beck and Taglioretti (2020).

It was assigned to Ferae by Gray (1821) and Gray (1825); to Polyprotodontia by Gadow (1898); to Pedimana by Ameghino (1904); to Polyprotodontia by Cope (1889) and Simpson (1927); to Polyprotodontia by Flower and Lydekker (1891), Hay (1902), Lambe (1908) and Simpson (1928); to Didelphoidae by Hay (1930); to Metatheria by Sloan and Van Valen (1965); to Marsupialia by Bonaparte (1850), Flower (1883), Wood and Ormsbee (1954) and Lillegraven and McKenna (1986); to Marsupicarnivora by Korth (1994); to Marsupialia by Simpson (1927), Simpson (1929), Simpson (1948), Sherman (1952), Stirton (1953), Johnson (1966), Martin and Webb (1974), Kurten and Anderson (1980) and Korth and Eaton (2004); to Didelphoidea by Clemens (1979), Marshall (1982), Hooker (1986), Nowak (1991), Goin (1997), McKenna and Bell (1997) and Goin et al. (2007); to Marsupialia by Ladaveze and Muizon (2010); to Marsupialia by Vianey-Liaud et al. (2014); to Didelphimorphia by Springer et al. (1994), Patton et al. (1996), Wilson and Reeder (2005), Engesser and Storch (2008), Horovitz et al. (2009) and Lofgren et al. (2020); and to Didelphimorphia by Beck and Taglioretti (2020).