Recognition of Foreign Marriages
Part VA deals with recognition of foreign marriages.
This division reflects the Act's tendency to seek to uphold the validity of marriages. Marriages will be recognised if they were valid in the country where they were performed if the marriage would be legal under Australian law. The foreign marriage certificate is proof of marriage and marriages need not be registered. Section 88EA however provides that marriages performed in another country between a man and another man or a woman and another woman must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.
As a marriage must be legal under Australian law, a foreign marriage will not be recognised if a person was already married (or the overseas divorce is not recognised in Australia), a person was under 18 (subject to some exceptions), the persons were siblings or parent/child, or there was duress or fraud.
Read more about this topic: Marriage Act 1961 (Australia)
Famous quotes containing the words recognition of, recognition, foreign and/or marriages:
“Admiration. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“For my name and memory I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)