Void Marriages
Part III entitled ‘void marriages’ establishes the circumstances in which a marriage is void. To preserve the validity of past marriages, this part is divided into years based on when amendments to this act were introduced.
A current purported marriage is void if:
- the parties are already married (polygamy).
- the parties are in a prohibited relationship: direct descendants or siblings, including adopted (by law) relationships.
- the marriage was not solemnized by an authorised celebrant (as in Part IV, Div 2).
- there is no consent (due to duress, fraud, mistake as to identity, mistake as to nature of ceremony, mental incapacity, or below marriageable age in Part II).
Read more about this topic: Marriage Act 1961 (Australia)
Famous quotes containing the words void and/or marriages:
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“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)