Marriage, civil partnership and the prohibited degrees of relationship
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Date
2009
Authors
Mee, John
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Publisher
Round Hall
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Abstract
This article considers the degrees of relationship which prevent persons from marrying each other or which, under the Civil Partnership Bill 2009 (“the Bill”), would exclude them from registering a civil partnership together. The possibility of reform in respect of the prohibited degrees of relationship for marriage has long been discussed. The planned introduction of civil partnership has raised the issue again, with the Bill providing for a list of prohibited relationships which, in addition to the necessary adjustment in terms of the parties being of the same gender, differs from that applicable in the marriage context. The list in the Bill seems to reflect a policy of implementing, in the civil partnership context, the law reform proposals which have been made in respect of marriage. It is possible to speculate that the intention is that the rules on marriage will be modernised by future legislation, so that they will ultimately be equivalent mutatis mutandis. As will be discussed, however, the list in the Bill reflects some changes which were not actually proposed by the relevant law reform bodies. In addition, there are serious questions as to the credibility of at least one of the law reform proposals which has influenced the proposed list of prohibitions in respect of civil partnership. This article will discuss the question of devising a list of prohibited relationships for civil partnership and reforming the list for married couples. In addition, the article identifies a significant problem with the current terms of the Bill relating to prohibited degrees of relationship, as this issue impacts on the Bill’s provisions for the recognition in Ireland of foreign legal relationships analogous to civil partnership.
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Keywords
Prohibited relationships , Marriage , Civil partnership
Citation
Mee, J. (2009) 'Marriage, civil partnership and the prohibited degrees of relationship', Irish Law Times, 27, pp. 259-264.
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© 2009, Round Hall and the contributor.