What you should know about the Marriage Act ( Part 2)

When you are getting married, civil registrar’s and marriage officer’s certificates or ministers or special licences become void after three months if the intended marriage has not been solemnised within this period. For the marriage to legally occur, a new notice must be given and a new certificate or licence issued.

Marriages, the Act provides, must be solemnised, according to whatever form and ceremony the parties wish, provided that:

1. It is solemnised in the presence of a marriage officer and two witnesses, between the hours of 6:00 am and 8:00 pm, with open doors;

2. The certificate or licence has first been delivered to the marriage officer by or before whom the marriage is to be solemnised;

3. During some part of the ceremony or immediately before, in the presence of the marriage officer and two witnesses, each of the parties declare the prescribed words:

“I do solemnly declare that I know not of any lawful impediment why, I (name), may not be joined in matrimony to (name).”

And each of them must also say to each other:

“I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, (name) do take thee (name), to be my lawful wife/husband.”

4. There is in fact no lawful impediment to the marriage.

These are the only legal requirements for a marriage to be lawful. All the rest is, or have been, added by societal or religious practice.

Parties may have a separate civil marriage and a separate religious service of marriage. The religious ceremony, in these circumstances follows upon the civil marriage and cannot be registered under the Act as the marriage. The civil one is the one which is registered.

The Act provides copiously for the registration of marriages. The registrar-general of births and death’s is also the registrar-general of marriages. The provisions relate to the keeping of the marriage register book, rectification of the registrar when a marriage is not properly registered and alteration of errors.

It also has provisions about the duties of marriage officers, and civil registrars to have a marriage register book as they are also registrars of marriages and must register marriages conducted by them therein.

The Act also creates offences triable summarily if marriage officers do not comply with the provisions of the Act. It provides that the director of prosecutions must give his permission before any prosecution can be commenced.

Any default by marriage officers in transmitting registers or copies of registers, must be reported by the registrar-general to the director of prosecutions.

It is an offence to tamper intentionally with public registers of marriages by falsifying, destroying, injuring, removing or concealing any of them, with intent to defeat, obstruct, prevent the course of justice, or to defraud, or injure any person. The penalty for this offence, is imprisonment for seven years.

It is also a misdemeanour offence to impersonate a marriage officer, unless the defendant proves that he did so under a mistake of law or of fact.

Other offences relate to the issue of false official certificates or alterations that something happened or did not happen; tampering, by marriage officers, with certificates or notices. Knowingly, being an unmarried person and going through a ceremony of marriage with a married person, is a misdemeanour, even if the other party does not know and is not therefore guilty of bigamy.

Fraudulent ceremonies of marriages are also of course void and knowing this and going through such a ceremony is an offence and is punishable with imprisonment for 10 years.

A person who impersonates another or marries under a false name, with intent to deceive, commits an offence punishable with imprisonment for 10 years.

Persons who conduct marriages knowing there are not marriage officers or that any requirements of law have not been met or that the marriage would be void or unlawful on any ground, commits an offence and is liable to be imprisoned for 10 years.

Any person who tries to prevent a marriage by pretending that his consent is required by law, or that there is a legal impediment to it, knowing this is not the case, commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for two years.

The Marriage Act, it is clear, deals with the dry requirements of the law, creates many offences and does not in any way allude to or deal with the emotional ties which lead people to bring themselves under the ambit of its provisions. It deals with the business of marriage in law and leaves romance out. Love may make the world go round but law makes the marriage real.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, as well as a women’s rights and children’s rights activist.