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Society
defines the norms of Marriage
As
old as human records
The significant commitment to union between a man and a
woman that we call marriage is witnessed to in written contracts
since ancient times - almost as far back as the invention of writing.
Bond
of interdepence between Man and Woman
As a human structure valued worldwide, marriage
is a formal, public agreement made between a man and a woman
to live in some agreed forms of interdependency - usually for the
purpose of founding and maintaining families. Monogamy is the most
widely accepted form of marriage world-wide. Children's need of
nurturing and education before reaching maturity, is the main social
incentive for developing the structures of marital and family law.
Locally
defined
The exact legal norms governing marriage are defined by
the particular society in which it is found. (In a cross-cultural
marriage, it is especially vital that these norms be clearly understood
and agreed between the parties).
Within
these broad boundaries
Each couple is free to work out their own, mutually
agreeable forms of marital harmony.
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Marriage
in Ireland: traditional Definition
The
voluntary union for
life,
of one man and one woman,
to the exclusion of all others.
- "Union"
is the essential word, qualified by "exclusive" - which
refers to sexual fidelity.
- Duration:
As our law allows divorce, "for life" is not in
the civil definition. A Marriage is valid "indefinitely"
or "until dissolved by a competent court".
- Heterosexual
nature of marriage is axiomatic in most jurisdictions, though
currently under question in some places.
- Monogamous
nature of marriage is generally accepted; the main exception:
Islamic Sharia law allows 1m :: 4w
(What
is legally required of the Parties)
1.
“The Age of Maturity”. In Ireland the minimum age
is eighteen. (Family Law Act, 1995); but parental consent is required
for marriage, up to the age of twenty one. (An exemption from this
may be granted by the Family Court).
2. “Sanity”. Any person certified as insane, and
committed to the care and custody of trustees, cannot marry until
declared sane.
3. “Not already married”. Any purported marriage
by a person who is already legally married, is void.
4. " Not Consanguine" . The parties must be “outside
the prohibited degrees of kindred”, i.e. not siblings or first
cousins, in order to avoid "consanguinity".
5. “Declaration of Intent”. Prior declaration
of Intent to enter a marriage must be made by the parties,
in writing, and on the required form, to the Civil Registrar
of your County, at least three months before the proposed date of
marriage. This underlines the expectation of Irish society that
marriages will be entered into only after due deliberation,
and with a sufficient knowledge of one's intended partner.
Registry
Office, Ireland is 090-663-2900;
Lo-Call 1890-252-076.... ...
But first see their Website
- with its useful section on Getting Married:
http://www.groireland.ie - where you can download the necessary
declaration of Intent form to send in.
It is vital that the couple obtain from the Registrar's
office a
Marriage Registration Form.
Getting the MRF: A couple intending marriage are required to give notification in
person, to a Registrar, of their intention to marry at least 3 months
before their intended marriage date. The notification can be given
to any Registrar. If there is no impediment to your marriage, the
Registrar will issue you with a Marriage Registration Form (MRF)
which gives you permission to marry.
Before the ceremony, you should give the MRF to
your marriage-
solemniser
. Immediately after the marriage
ceremony the MRF should be signed by you and your spouse, the two
witnesses and the
solemniser
.
Returning the MRF:
If you get married by
civil ceremony, the Registrar who solemnised the marriage will register
the marriage as soon as possible after the ceremony. If you get
married by religious ceremony, you should give the signed MRF within
one month to any Registrar (not necessarily the one who issued it),
for the marriage to be registered.
If the completed MRF is not returned to a Registrar
within 56 days of the intended date of marriage recorded on
the MRF, the Registrar can serve a notice on you requiring you to
return the MRF within 14 days of receiving the notice. If you do
not comply with this requirement, the Registrar can serve a notice
on you requiring you to attend on a particular date at the office
of the Registrar (or other place given in the notice) with the completed
MRF. If you are unable to give the MRF to the Registrar when you
meet, you have a further 14 days to give it.
You cannot get your civil marriage certificate until the marriage
is registered.
Registration of marriages outside Ireland:
Marriages of Irish citizens abroad are registered in the country
where they occur. A marriage certificate issued abroad will normally
be recognised, for legal purposes, here in Ireland. The General
Register Office in the Republic of Ireland has no function in the
registration of marriages of Irish citizens that take place abroad,
or in advising on such marriages. Marriages that take place outside
the State do not need to be registered in Ireland.
Applying for a
civil marriage certificate
- The Marriage Register
entries are public records and anybody can obtain copies of them.
- You can apply in writing,
by fax or in person giving as many details of the marriage as
you can, i.e. full names, date and location of event, parent's
names and occupations, mother's maiden names etc. Obviously the
more information you can give us the more chance we have of finding
the records you are looking for.
- Our index and records
are date based and are in a manual format so we will need
accurate dates (correct year at least). The absolute minimum information
we need is the forename and surname (of both parties if it's a
marriage) and the year the event occurred and in many cases we
will need some further detail/s such as an exact date, the location
of the event, other forenames, parents names etc. (General
Register Office)
Church
Certificate of Marriage can be had from the parish priest
where the wedding takes place, but you may need a civil certificate
of your marriage for various legal and civil purposes.
What
is Marriage For?
Irish
Law does not stipulate any formal purpose for
marriage, although Art. 41 of our Constitution implies one,
when affirming an essential link between marriage and the family,
which is the nucleus of society. So far as the law is concerned,
a couple may enter a legal monogamous union for whatever purpose
they espouse or aspire to....
Catholic
Canon Law declares two purposes for marriage:
1) the good
of the couple, (i.e. the forming of a real union-of-life)
and
2) procreation & education of children. (can. 1055).
To be sacramentally
married in the Catholic Church, the couple must accept both of these
purposes as integral to their marriage.
Who
gets the better deal, in a marriage?
As
to which party (bride or groom) gets the most out of the marriage,
no simple answer is available.
Only a marriage where both parties feel fairly treated is likely to be happy and lasting.
- Fidelity
The
principal duty is fidelity to the [exclusive] union. Other
duties are implicit, and usually emerge only if
litigation arises.
- Partnership
of Life
Under Canon [i.e. Church] Law, spouses are called to establish
a "partnership of their whole life" ("consortium totius
vitae" Canon no. 1055). Reflect on what content to give to
this evocative phrase.
- Support
Common-Law obliges a husband to support
his wife. While there is no reciprocal formally-stated duty
on wives to provide for their husbands, such may be inferred from
the equality provisions in the Family Law Act 1976. In case of
dispute, levels of maintenance can be set by the Family Court.
"Conjugal
Rights"?
The Irish Family Law Act 1988 abolished the action for
Restitution of Conjugal Rights, on the basis that legal
sanction to oblige people to live with their spouses would be
contrary to modern values. However, prolonged failure to do so
can become grounds for Legal Separation.
Intimacy
Corresponding to the duty of fidelity is some implicit
right to intimacy. A spouse's right to physical integrity
is still protected by law. The physical union of intercourse is
by mutual consent and may not be imposed unilaterally.
Financial
Support
A wife has an unspecific but real right to some financial
support from her husband. In case of dispute, a determinate
level of maintenance can be set by the Family Court.
Joint
Taxation
Spouses may jointly elect to be taxed either individually
or as a couple, whichever they agree is to their mutual benefit.
Inheritance
The surviving spouse is the primary beneficiary of his/her
deceased spouse's estate.
Other
rights
Rights to respectful treatment, normal communication, sharing
in household duties, a fair share in determining how the income
of the household is spent - are implicit, and can
be tested by litigation. Decisions by the Family Court are based
what is "fair", with due regard to modern values in marriage.
As of the present, these are unwritten rules, and so, to an extent,
in a state of negotiable flux.
Is
he the "Head of the Household"?
- Traditionally,
and with apparent Biblical sanction (St. Paul to
the Ephesians 5:21) the husband was "Head" of the Household. This
was reflected also in the civil law of marriage. And up to the
1960s, in the Catholic wedding vows the wife promised to "love,
honour and obey" her husband.
- In civil
law, this obligation of a wife to obey her husband
has long lapsed, at least in the western democracies. In an
age when the equal dignity of men and women is increasingly defended
by the law, husband and wife are now seen as joint heads
of their familial household. In this new context, decisions affecting
them both cannot be simply decreed by the husband, but must be
reached by mutual agreement. This implies a radical agreement
to negotiate, in an ongoing fashion, the details of their marital
union.
- In practice,
the obligation "to love and honour" each other might now be expanded
to read:"to love, honour and negotiate!"
Legal
Recourse for Spouses
- The
law may be invoked to settle
disagrements between spouses. Some sort of unwritten norms
to regulate what is expected between spouses is implicit in
this fact. The general criterion that seems to be operative is
that of "fairness" within the present social understanding of
the marriage bond, in Ireland.
- Declaration
of Nullity: Under unusual conditions,
a seemingly valid marriage may be declared invalid because of
some defect relating to the form of the ceremony, or the person
or state of mind of either party at the time of the ceremony.
It is essential that the defect was already present at the time
that the marriage was celebrated.
- Decree
of divorce dissolves an existing marriage
on the basis of facts occurring after the contract was entered
into.
- Less
drastic measures, e.g.: Family Home
Protection Act 1976; Family Law (Protection of Spouses
and Children) Act 1981. Appeal can be made to the Family Court
for the redress of perceived injustices in the allotment of available
funds. Maintenance and Barring orders can be issued,
to protect the rights of a spouse and/or the children in a family.
Clearly, it is preferable that any disputed aspect of a marriage
should be settled between the spouses themselves, without needing
recourse to outside adjudication. But the law provides some kind
of "safety net" for otherwise unresolvable disagreements.
Present
situation:
Pre-nuptial contracts purporting
to establish the division of assets in the even of the couple's
separation, have [as yet] no validity in Irish Law. Reason:
Such contracts are deemed to undermine the stability and
firmness of the marriage union.
Change in Future? This provision could, of
course, change in the near future, shifting the priority
away from the social stability of the marriage bond and
in favour of individual property-rights. While the
civil validation of Pre-nuptial contracts may well have a weakening
effect on the stability of some marriages, and Irish Law Reform
Commission is giving some support to modifying the current (2007)
situation regarding Pre-Nuptial Contracts.
Practical
Suggestion: After our Pre-Marriage Course, we suggest
each partner write a pre-nuptial letter of friendship -
love-letters, if you will - which in a climate of affection, provide
opportunity to raise any point with which either party is uneasy
or anxious, for fuller discussion before the wedding takes
place.
Our society
and law still values marriage as a durable union, entered
into by consenting adults, only after mature consideration of
their own and their partner's personality, capacities and ideals.
The intent
to get "fully" married, in a full, not a provisional commitment
for life..implies agreement
between the parties to a modern marriage: to Love,
Honour and Negotiate!
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