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:
“I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.””
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Democracy and equality try to deny ... the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England.... If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)