2) Age of witnesses: witnesses don't enter into the contract. Rather, they are people who can be asked, in the event of a dispute, whether the purported contract was ever made, and if so, by who and on what terms. I don't see why you would have to be of age to carry out this role: you just need to be a reliable person who can confirm what happened.
Quaker wedding certificates hold the signatures of everyone present - this is so that if all the older generation die off, the children present can attest to the marriage.
I don't know if these are "legal tender" though, I assume not.
Quakers and Jews have special rules that don't apply to anyone else.
Anyway, unless there was a highly unlikely scenario whereby all the Quaker witnesses, except those under age, were to suddenly die before the register was properly returned to the state, I can't imagine that this is going to be a problem.
In every other situation whereby there are only two witnesses who sign the register, the chance of there being a problem (because one is too young or both die before the register is returned) must be exponentially high.
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I noticed whilst browsing about marriage law in E&W that one grounds for nullification is that one party is pregnant with someone else's child at the point of marriage.
Quakers do have a nominated person who has to be present, but they don't marry the couple - the couple marry each other, but they must use a set form of words. (There's a special exemption in law for this.)
Quakers do have a nominated person who has to be present, but they don't marry the couple - the couple marry each other, but they must use a set form of words. (There's a special exemption in law for this.)
Interestingly, it appears that the Quakers don't need to have approved buildings. And it also appears that the Nominated Person doesn't actually have to be there..
In the RC church the marriage has to be consummated sexually before it is considered to be a proper marriage.
Still the law in E&W I think.
Not quite. A marriage between a an and a woman is voidable if not consummated, but is not automatically void. Same-sex marriages are not voidable for non-consummation.
In the RC church the marriage has to be consummated sexually before it is considered to be a proper marriage.
Still the law in E&W I think.
Not quite. A marriage between a an and a woman is voidable if not consummated, but is not automatically void. Same-sex marriages are not voidable for non-consummation.
Ah yes I see. Sorry I didn't pick up the part about it being automatically void.
Quakers do have a nominated person who has to be present, but they don't marry the couple - the couple marry each other, but they must use a set form of words. (There's a special exemption in law for this.)
Interestingly, it appears that the Quakers don't need to have approved buildings.
Is there anywhere other than England and Wales where a wedding not held at the office of a registrar or other government official can generally only take place in approved buildings, or during certain hours of the day?
Quakers do have a nominated person who has to be present, but they don't marry the couple - the couple marry each other, but they must use a set form of words. (There's a special exemption in law for this.)
Interestingly, it appears that the Quakers don't need to have approved buildings.
Is there anywhere other than England and Wales where a wedding not held at the office of a registrar or other government official can generally only take place in approved buildings, or during certain hours of the day?
I'd be very surprised if there weren't very specific rules in Singapore.
I've never heard of those kinds of legal limits for wedding location in the US. Weddings used to be mostly in places of worship, and at the Justice of the Peace office less often (AFAIK). I think people have occasionally had garden weddings for a long time. But, since the '60s/'70s at least, couples have ranged farther afield, and in different directions. One of the first weddings like that I ever heard of was done while sky-diving--the couple and the clergyman. Not sure about witnesses.
So (respectfully) I find it odd to have to be in a certain kind of building at certain hours. I knew about having to sign the civil registry book--which, to someone in a country without an established church, seems odd enough.
ETA: The requirement to have a certain person, other than the officiant, to authorize it seems strange to me, too. Laws probably vary by state and locality here. But I think, for a legally-recognized marriage, you generally have to have a license and an officiant that the powers that be (PTB) consider legitimate. Of course, these days that can include people who've gotten ordination off the Internet (e.g., the Universal Life Church).
I just searched on "secular-humanist wedding", and got lots of hits from organizations that do them--including Humanism.org.uk, which reports they're legal in Scotland and N. Ireland.
FWIW, French law is considerably more restrictive. The one and only place anyone can get married is the Town Hall, and the only person who can officiate is the Mayor (or his/her deputy).
After that, you are free to have any kind of religious blessing ceremony you feel like, wherever you like, but only the civil ceremony at the Town Hall is recognised as a legally binding marriage, and it always has to come first. For example, your average Catholic priest would refuse to perform a nuptial mass for a couple who couldn’t show him the civil marriage certificate. That said, a lot of religious people do regard the religious ceremony as the “real” marriage, and the prior trip to the Town Hall as a boring bit of paperwork. I disagree with them. Before our wedding, several GLEs asked who (meaning which minister of religion) was going to marry us. We would look nonplussed and answer “the Mayor”. Partly to annoy them, and partly because it’s true.
I am broadly very much in favour of separating the legal and religious elements of marriage like this.
So am I. By the way, the laws on where you can get legally married in England and Wales and what words you must use are quite precise: for instance, hot-air balloons and narrowboats cannot be registered as legitimate venues, because they aren't physical buildings rooted to one place. Equally, although couples like to write their own vows these days, the "official" words have to be included if the wedding is to be recognised in law.
I just searched on "secular-humanist wedding", and got lots of hits from organizations that do them--including Humanism.org.uk, which reports they're legal in Scotland and N. Ireland.
Which, I think, is utterly ridiculous. The law in England and Wales has never quite caught up to the reality that offering a right to one group by necessity means that it should also be extended to others.
If certain religions can register their buildings then everyone should be able to.
If a large number of people joined the Society of Friends and created their own Authorised People, it appears that would be legally allowed to conduct weddings wherever they like in England and Wales. A right that literally no other group has.
I agree. I think what we're dealing with here is the legacy of history, in particular (dare I say it?) the conflation of Established Church and State and even (perhaps I'm being ultra-cynical here) the reluctance of the CofE to give up a nice little earner.
I agree. I think what we're dealing with here is the legacy of history, in particular (dare I say it?) the conflation of Established Church and State and even (perhaps I'm being ultra-cynical here) the reluctance of the CofE to give up a nice little earner.
Well I think it is also a relic of an age where the natural place to get married was church or chapel.
That's getting increasingly out of step with reality.
Weddings used to be mostly in places of worship, and at the Justice of the Peace office less often (AFAIK). I think people have occasionally had garden weddings for a long time.
Whether weddings happened in churches often depended on the religious tradition of the bride/couple. Church weddings were more common in some groups and less so in others. Weddings in homes used to be very common among some groups, at least in this part of the country. And Jewish weddings often took place in hotels.
And not every state has justices of the peace. We don’t have them. Here, magistrates are the civil officials authorized to officiate at weddings.
But I think, for a legally-recognized marriage, you generally have to have a license and an officiant that the powers that be (PTB) consider legitimate. Of course, these days that can include people who've gotten ordination off the Internet (e.g., the Universal Life Church).
FWIW, such people are not considered “legitimate” or authorized to officiate at weddings in every state. As you said, who is authorized varies from state to state.
One thing I don't understand about the USA - and perhaps explains the British reluctance to change Marriage law in general - is how the size and complication of your jurisdictional differences doesn't lead to widespread fraud.
If one can sign a bit of paper and get married in a hurry in Las Vegas, who is checking if you are already married or telling the truth?
When we (both UK citizens) got married in Las Vegas no one checked anything, just took our names, addresses, places of birth - and that was it, and there was the stretch limo waiting outside to take us straight to the wedding chapel. We took our passports with us as we were sure they'd want to see them - but no!
I don't know that anyone ever checks whether someone is already married. That might be possible, now, due to the Internet. But I don't know if there's any kind of national database. Don't know if the Social Security database could be checked to that extent.
It would be much easier to verify that someone *is* married, of course.
If it later comes out that one party is already married, they can be charged with bigamy. I don't know how often that goes as far as a trial. IMHO, would make more sense to Strongly Encourage one of the couples to divorce. (*Both* might want to!)
I just searched on "secular-humanist wedding", and got lots of hits from organizations that do them--including Humanism.org.uk, which reports they're legal in Scotland and N. Ireland.
Which, I think, is utterly ridiculous. The law in England and Wales has never quite caught up to the reality that offering a right to one group by necessity means that it should also be extended to others.
The humanism site I mentioned also indicated that progress is being made in England and Wales.
OTOH, it's important to know that a Vegas wedding-chapel marriage is not certain to be accepted as legally binding everywhere.
Some friends of mine were having trouble getting a date at the Town Hall before the date they’d picked for their religious ceremony (they organised their wedding rather quickly, and it was a busy Town Hall in Paris). They seriously considered getting on a plane to Vegas. They didn’t do it because it was far from certain that the marriage would be legally recognised when they got back. In the end they managed to get an appointment.
One of the pieces of paper I had to hand in to the Town Hall when we put our marriage application in was a certificate from the British embassy stating that under the laws of my home country I was entitled to get married (i.e. not underage, not already married etc.) and that the French marriage would be recognised as legal there.*
If you don’t want to run into trouble later, these sorts of questions need to be carefully looked into in advance.
*Getting back to what this thread was originally about, the Town Hall wouldn’t give a rip about a gay witness being in the blast radius of a wedding, but in the case of a foreign national contracting a same-sex marriage, I think they would want to know whether the marriage would be recognised by the person’s home country.
I think it’s quite likely that humanist celebrants maybe allowed - that would just add one more to the existing set of ‘belief systems’ allowed to conduct marriages. I think it’s less likely, or at least a much longer term proposition to replace the idea of registered places for weddings.
If it later comes out that one party is already married, they can be charged with bigamy. I don't know how often that goes as far as a trial.
I’m aware of one bigamy case here in the last half-century. (There may have been more, of course, but I’d be surprised if there were many more.) It went to the State Supreme Court, which ultimately found that the defendant was not guilty of bigamy because, in part, the second wedding was officiated by a Universal Life minister and therefore wasn’t valid.
Here, the parties are required to attest to whether they have ever been married when they apply for the license, and to provide a copy of the divorce decree if they have been married before.
As for the question @mr cheesy asked, I’m not sure I know the answer except to say that fraud has been, as best I can tell, a fairly rare issue.
Knowing a bit about the history of English marriage law, what @Margaret and @mr cheesy have said about marriage formalities in Nevada explains why I'd agree with most of what @BroJames has just said.
Modern English marriage law descends from Lord Hardwicke's Act of 1753. There's a certain amount of doubt even now as to what the law was immediately before that. What it was designed to bring an end to were clandestine marriages provided by stickit CofE clergymen who conducted marriages in private chapels and public houses round the Fleet in London. These marriages were valid, indissoluble and had full property consequences. The ease in arranging them was a bounty for fortune hunters. Their existence meant that it was far too easy for a person to marry someone - as they thought - quite properly, only to find the person they thought was their spouse was already married to someone else. This could easily only come to light many years and several children later.
There were also cases of people claiming to be married to people who denied they'd ever even met the person before, or making such claims so as to be paid to go away. Remember, it's usually harder to prove a negative than a fact.
It had earlier also been the case that people could marry merely by exchanging 'I take ... ' in the presence of witnesses, or even 'I will take ....' i.e. future espousal, what we'd now call getting engaged, followed by sexual intercourse. It isn't at all clear whether that was still good law in the 1750s. But that meant there would even be cases of people who didn't realise that in the eyes of the law, they might turn out to be married to someone they thought they'd just been having a naughty fling with.
Ever since then, a marriage has only been legally valid if entered into according to the right legal process. Initially, that meant in the established church after calling of banns or by properly obtained licence. Since the 1830s, as I've mentioned, there have been other options, but they have all involved a process which is formal, properly documented and involves both parties having to say they take each other in a manner that evidences that this is their own decision and of their own free will.
It is an essential aspect of this system that it should be so far as possible, clear, indisputable and easy to find out, who is married to whom, and that a person should not be in doubt whether they are married or not, and who their spouse is.
It sounds as though Nevada is desperately in need of its own equivalent of Lord Hardwick's Act.
Incidentally though, there's actually no real need to change the law to enable humanist celebrants to take weddings. As long as they use an authorised location, e.g. many hotels, have a registrar present (much as I described earlier), as applies to hotel weddings anyway, and don't include any religious material in the registrar's bit, there shouldn't be a problem. And if people want to have part of the ceremony in the garden, then as long as they do the most formal bits in the presence of a registrar, say the right words and are in the right place, there's no reason why they shouldn't drift out to their favourite tree to drink a loving cup together - or even (I suppose) consummate their union in the sight of their guests, though I for one would hope not.
just to throw another piece of trivia into the mix, AFAIR in Scotland it is just the person, not the building, which has the "official"ness. which is why you can get married wherever you like as long as the right person is there.
We got married in a Scottish church, but wanted my wife's godfather (a CofE vicar/priest/minister) to officiate, so he had to get a temporary license to do it: From National Registers of Scotland
Last wedding I was at in Scotland - the venue was a tent in the grounds of a stately home, the officiant was the Archdruid of the Church of Whatevs, and the vows were handknitted by the bride and groom. But I assume it was all legal and binding on some plane or other.
Both of my nephews were married by licensed humanist celebrants; the ceremonies were held respectively in a partly-ruined castle and a hotel complex.
It's become quite a thing recently for couples to plight their troth in the presence of a pagan official at the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney; while I fully respect their right to do so, such things are depriving honest organists of their livelihood ...
Quakers do have a nominated person who has to be present, but they don't marry the couple - the couple marry each other, but they must use a set form of words. (There's a special exemption in law for this.)
It is always the couple who marry each other. They do so by saying whatever words or concepts are required by local legislation. The RC requirement which Forthview sets out is not a requirement at law.
Of course we are talking about what is required for a legally recognised wedding ceremony,not about the idea and the ideals of Christian marriage.Most Christians live within some sort of state and will pay taxes to that state.This does not mean that they have no obligation to support within their means the Church to which they claim to belong.Many people ,even those who are not regular churchgoers, would see that the solemnity of their marriage vows is enhanced by making these promises in the sight of God and not just a state official.
I understand that in England non consummation of a marriage is a legal ground for annulment of a marriage,not for divorce from a legally contracted marriage (though I may be wrong ).
I understand that in England non consummation of a marriage is a legal ground for annulment of a marriage,not for divorce from a legally contracted marriage (though I may be wrong ).
Yes, it is. Isn't it in most countries?
As has been mentioned earlier, there's a difference between marriages that are void - i.e. they have never existed, e.g. because one party is already married to someone else, or under age, and marriages that are voidable. That means the couple are married until one of them applies to have it avoided, but after that, they are not divorced. They are regarded as though they had never been married. Non-consummation falls in the latter category. So does fecundatio per alium that was also mentioned earlier.
Incidentally, reverting from this interesting tangent to the OP, is there any news as to what has happened about the gay best man and the disapproving vicar?
Incidentally, reverting from this interesting tangent to the OP, is there any news as to what has happened about the gay best man and the disapproving vicar?
AIUI, there's a meeting between the couple and the local clergy later today. If I hear anything I can reasonably report, I will.
I understand that in England non consummation of a marriage is a legal ground for annulment of a marriage,not for divorce from a legally contracted marriage (though I may be wrong ).
Yes, it is. Isn't it in most countries?
As has been mentioned earlier, there's a difference between marriages that are void - i.e. they have never existed, e.g. because one party is already married to someone else, or under age, and marriages that are voidable. That means the couple are married until one of them applies to have it avoided, but after that, they are not divorced. They are regarded as though they had never been married. Non-consummation falls in the latter category. So does fecundatio per alium that was also mentioned earlier.
Incidentally, reverting from this interesting tangent to the OP, is there any news as to what has happened about the gay best man and the disapproving vicar?
As it happen, I once (I can't remember the year but it was in the early seventies) conducted an undefended application for annulment of a marriage on the ground of non-consummation. The client was a strict RC and wanted to remarry in church. She may have had real trouble then doing so after a divorce but not so after an annulment. The judge commented to me late that it had been the first such application he'd heard in 10 years on the bench and he'd never come across one at the bar.
I didn't do a lot of court work, but many, many years ago I took instructions from a woman and advised her that from what she told me, she was entitled to annulment rather than a divorce. I moved jobs very shortly afterwards, and so do not know what happened after that.
I can understand the difference between' void 'and' voidable' but doesn't the word 'annulment' suggest that the marriage,at least to the parties who grant the 'annulment', is considered as having been null and void from the beginning.
That,at least,is as far as I know,the view of RC marriage tribunals which grant annulments.
It's not surprising that annulments for non-consummation rarely happen in the case of civil marriages as people have the option of divorce.They do not have that option within some religious communities.
English law recognised annulment even before divorce through the courts was introduced in 1857. An annulment also meant that as the person is regarded as never having been married, they could then marry someone else in church.
The marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled for non-consummation and she was not divorced. Enoch's distinction between void and voidable seems right to me.
I recall that QI argued, somewhat mischievously, that Henry VIII had either four or two wives depending on whether you are Anglican or Catholic, but certainly not six.
If you are Anglican, the marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves don't count because they were annulled. If you are Catholic, those annulments don't count, and therefore none of the other marriages are valid because one or other of Catherine and Anne were still alive when he purported to contract them.
I recall that QI argued, somewhat mischievously, that Henry VIII had either four or two wives depending on whether you are Anglican or Catholic, but certainly not six.
If you are Anglican, the marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves don't count because they were annulled. If you are Catholic, those annulments don't count, and therefore none of the other marriages are valid because one or other of Catherine and Anne were still alive when he purported to contract them.
Not quite. Henry married Jane Seymour after both his previous wives were dead. No one had any doubt that their son, Edward, was legitimate so the RC count would be 3. Also IIRC Henry also had his marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard annulled before executing them. The former is why it was argued that Elizabeth as well as Mary were illegitimate and therefore Jane Grey was rightful queen. Henry himself had eventually included both in the succession after his son. Protestant supporters of Jane Grey's claim would say two marriages were legitimate.
BTW I can recall a couple of cases of bigamy in the SF Bay Area. One, in 1991, was a Stanford surgeon with three wives none of whom knew about the other two at least initially (the 3rd knew he had been married to the 2nd and became suspicious that the divorce he said had happened hadn't when he died of a heart attack and everything came out).
A much older case was back circa 1850 when a couple married with neither telling the other that an earlier spouse was likely still around. The man, Talbot Henry Green, a prominent merchant, ran for mayor of San Francisco then local news reported he was actually Paul Geddes and had a wife and children and was wanted for fraud back East. He headed back East vowing to clear his name and but didn't. She, Sarah Armstrong Montgomery Green Wallis, eventually got a divorce and married a third time (her first husband who was last seen heading for Hawaii was apparently never heard from again though never declared dead either) and has a park named after her in Palo Alto (Green has a street in San Francisco).
I recall that QI argued, somewhat mischievously, that Henry VIII had either four or two wives depending on whether you are Anglican or Catholic, but certainly not six.
Yes. It’s not a requirement in England where there’s no legal minimum age. The officiant needs to make a judgment about the prospective witness’s capacity.
Oooh I think there is - you cannot witness a contract unless you are over 18. A marriage is the equivalent of a contract in law (and equity)
As this page indicates it is not always a requirement that witnesses be over 18, and my previous post directly quoted from the published advice for the clergy (C of E) issued by the Faculty Office.
Sorry I can see the examples you mention …. I must be missing it. I am very surprised that it can be under 18 (if true) as you cannot have a mortgage under that age for the very reason that you cannot enter a contract unless of legal majority. A witness has to know what the are witnessing hence the assumption of being 18.
Ok but it would be weird if one could take on a the legal contract of marriage before 18 (which apparently one can, with permission) but not witness that contract. Right?
Not as weird as the fact that you can marry and have sex at 16 but if you take any photos of the act you can be done for making indecent images of children.
One allied oddity in Scotland is that 16 year olds are legally responsible in a lot of circumstances - they can, for example, sign their own absence notes from school, and strictly speaking have to give permission for educational info to be shared with parents.
I recall that QI argued, somewhat mischievously, that Henry VIII had either four or two wives depending on whether you are Anglican or Catholic, but certainly not six.
If you are Anglican, the marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves don't count because they were annulled. If you are Catholic, those annulments don't count, and therefore none of the other marriages are valid because one or other of Catherine and Anne were still alive when he purported to contract them.
Not quite. Henry married Jane Seymour after both his previous wives were dead. No one had any doubt that their son, Edward, was legitimate so the RC count would be 3.
*Checks Wikipedia* So he did.
I'm shocked to think QI could ever be less than accurate ...
Comments
Quakers and Jews have special rules that don't apply to anyone else.
Anyway, unless there was a highly unlikely scenario whereby all the Quaker witnesses, except those under age, were to suddenly die before the register was properly returned to the state, I can't imagine that this is going to be a problem.
In every other situation whereby there are only two witnesses who sign the register, the chance of there being a problem (because one is too young or both die before the register is returned) must be exponentially high.
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I noticed whilst browsing about marriage law in E&W that one grounds for nullification is that one party is pregnant with someone else's child at the point of marriage.
I never knew that.
In case anyone is interested in the minutiae.
Still the law in E&W I think.
The more I read about the Quaker way of doing (marriage) things, the more I like it.
Interestingly, it appears that the Quakers don't need to have approved buildings. And it also appears that the Nominated Person doesn't actually have to be there..
Not quite. A marriage between a an and a woman is voidable if not consummated, but is not automatically void. Same-sex marriages are not voidable for non-consummation.
Ah yes I see. Sorry I didn't pick up the part about it being automatically void.
I'd be very surprised if there weren't very specific rules in Singapore.
So (respectfully) I find it odd to have to be in a certain kind of building at certain hours. I knew about having to sign the civil registry book--which, to someone in a country without an established church, seems odd enough.
FWIW.
ETA: The requirement to have a certain person, other than the officiant, to authorize it seems strange to me, too. Laws probably vary by state and locality here. But I think, for a legally-recognized marriage, you generally have to have a license and an officiant that the powers that be (PTB) consider legitimate. Of course, these days that can include people who've gotten ordination off the Internet (e.g., the Universal Life Church).
FWIW.
After that, you are free to have any kind of religious blessing ceremony you feel like, wherever you like, but only the civil ceremony at the Town Hall is recognised as a legally binding marriage, and it always has to come first. For example, your average Catholic priest would refuse to perform a nuptial mass for a couple who couldn’t show him the civil marriage certificate. That said, a lot of religious people do regard the religious ceremony as the “real” marriage, and the prior trip to the Town Hall as a boring bit of paperwork. I disagree with them. Before our wedding, several GLEs asked who (meaning which minister of religion) was going to marry us. We would look nonplussed and answer “the Mayor”. Partly to annoy them, and partly because it’s true.
I am broadly very much in favour of separating the legal and religious elements of marriage like this.
Which, I think, is utterly ridiculous. The law in England and Wales has never quite caught up to the reality that offering a right to one group by necessity means that it should also be extended to others.
If certain religions can register their buildings then everyone should be able to.
If a large number of people joined the Society of Friends and created their own Authorised People, it appears that would be legally allowed to conduct weddings wherever they like in England and Wales. A right that literally no other group has.
Well I think it is also a relic of an age where the natural place to get married was church or chapel.
That's getting increasingly out of step with reality.
And not every state has justices of the peace. We don’t have them. Here, magistrates are the civil officials authorized to officiate at weddings.
FWIW, such people are not considered “legitimate” or authorized to officiate at weddings in every state. As you said, who is authorized varies from state to state.
If one can sign a bit of paper and get married in a hurry in Las Vegas, who is checking if you are already married or telling the truth?
I don't know that anyone ever checks whether someone is already married. That might be possible, now, due to the Internet. But I don't know if there's any kind of national database. Don't know if the Social Security database could be checked to that extent.
It would be much easier to verify that someone *is* married, of course.
If it later comes out that one party is already married, they can be charged with bigamy. I don't know how often that goes as far as a trial. IMHO, would make more sense to Strongly Encourage one of the couples to divorce. (*Both* might want to!)
The humanism site I mentioned also indicated that progress is being made in England and Wales.
Some friends of mine were having trouble getting a date at the Town Hall before the date they’d picked for their religious ceremony (they organised their wedding rather quickly, and it was a busy Town Hall in Paris). They seriously considered getting on a plane to Vegas. They didn’t do it because it was far from certain that the marriage would be legally recognised when they got back. In the end they managed to get an appointment.
One of the pieces of paper I had to hand in to the Town Hall when we put our marriage application in was a certificate from the British embassy stating that under the laws of my home country I was entitled to get married (i.e. not underage, not already married etc.) and that the French marriage would be recognised as legal there.*
If you don’t want to run into trouble later, these sorts of questions need to be carefully looked into in advance.
*Getting back to what this thread was originally about, the Town Hall wouldn’t give a rip about a gay witness being in the blast radius of a wedding, but in the case of a foreign national contracting a same-sex marriage, I think they would want to know whether the marriage would be recognised by the person’s home country.
Here, the parties are required to attest to whether they have ever been married when they apply for the license, and to provide a copy of the divorce decree if they have been married before.
As for the question @mr cheesy asked, I’m not sure I know the answer except to say that fraud has been, as best I can tell, a fairly rare issue.
Modern English marriage law descends from Lord Hardwicke's Act of 1753. There's a certain amount of doubt even now as to what the law was immediately before that. What it was designed to bring an end to were clandestine marriages provided by stickit CofE clergymen who conducted marriages in private chapels and public houses round the Fleet in London. These marriages were valid, indissoluble and had full property consequences. The ease in arranging them was a bounty for fortune hunters. Their existence meant that it was far too easy for a person to marry someone - as they thought - quite properly, only to find the person they thought was their spouse was already married to someone else. This could easily only come to light many years and several children later.
There were also cases of people claiming to be married to people who denied they'd ever even met the person before, or making such claims so as to be paid to go away. Remember, it's usually harder to prove a negative than a fact.
It had earlier also been the case that people could marry merely by exchanging 'I take ... ' in the presence of witnesses, or even 'I will take ....' i.e. future espousal, what we'd now call getting engaged, followed by sexual intercourse. It isn't at all clear whether that was still good law in the 1750s. But that meant there would even be cases of people who didn't realise that in the eyes of the law, they might turn out to be married to someone they thought they'd just been having a naughty fling with.
Ever since then, a marriage has only been legally valid if entered into according to the right legal process. Initially, that meant in the established church after calling of banns or by properly obtained licence. Since the 1830s, as I've mentioned, there have been other options, but they have all involved a process which is formal, properly documented and involves both parties having to say they take each other in a manner that evidences that this is their own decision and of their own free will.
It is an essential aspect of this system that it should be so far as possible, clear, indisputable and easy to find out, who is married to whom, and that a person should not be in doubt whether they are married or not, and who their spouse is.
It sounds as though Nevada is desperately in need of its own equivalent of Lord Hardwick's Act.
Incidentally though, there's actually no real need to change the law to enable humanist celebrants to take weddings. As long as they use an authorised location, e.g. many hotels, have a registrar present (much as I described earlier), as applies to hotel weddings anyway, and don't include any religious material in the registrar's bit, there shouldn't be a problem. And if people want to have part of the ceremony in the garden, then as long as they do the most formal bits in the presence of a registrar, say the right words and are in the right place, there's no reason why they shouldn't drift out to their favourite tree to drink a loving cup together - or even (I suppose) consummate their union in the sight of their guests, though I for one would hope not.
We got married in a Scottish church, but wanted my wife's godfather (a CofE vicar/priest/minister) to officiate, so he had to get a temporary license to do it:
From National Registers of Scotland
It's become quite a thing recently for couples to plight their troth in the presence of a pagan official at the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney; while I fully respect their right to do so, such things are depriving honest organists of their livelihood ...
It is always the couple who marry each other. They do so by saying whatever words or concepts are required by local legislation. The RC requirement which Forthview sets out is not a requirement at law.
As has been mentioned earlier, there's a difference between marriages that are void - i.e. they have never existed, e.g. because one party is already married to someone else, or under age, and marriages that are voidable. That means the couple are married until one of them applies to have it avoided, but after that, they are not divorced. They are regarded as though they had never been married. Non-consummation falls in the latter category. So does fecundatio per alium that was also mentioned earlier.
Incidentally, reverting from this interesting tangent to the OP, is there any news as to what has happened about the gay best man and the disapproving vicar?
As it happen, I once (I can't remember the year but it was in the early seventies) conducted an undefended application for annulment of a marriage on the ground of non-consummation. The client was a strict RC and wanted to remarry in church. She may have had real trouble then doing so after a divorce but not so after an annulment. The judge commented to me late that it had been the first such application he'd heard in 10 years on the bench and he'd never come across one at the bar.
I agree with @Gee D that they are rare.
That,at least,is as far as I know,the view of RC marriage tribunals which grant annulments.
It's not surprising that annulments for non-consummation rarely happen in the case of civil marriages as people have the option of divorce.They do not have that option within some religious communities.
If you are Anglican, the marriages to Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves don't count because they were annulled. If you are Catholic, those annulments don't count, and therefore none of the other marriages are valid because one or other of Catherine and Anne were still alive when he purported to contract them.
Not quite. Henry married Jane Seymour after both his previous wives were dead. No one had any doubt that their son, Edward, was legitimate so the RC count would be 3. Also IIRC Henry also had his marriages to Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard annulled before executing them. The former is why it was argued that Elizabeth as well as Mary were illegitimate and therefore Jane Grey was rightful queen. Henry himself had eventually included both in the succession after his son. Protestant supporters of Jane Grey's claim would say two marriages were legitimate.
BTW I can recall a couple of cases of bigamy in the SF Bay Area. One, in 1991, was a Stanford surgeon with three wives none of whom knew about the other two at least initially (the 3rd knew he had been married to the 2nd and became suspicious that the divorce he said had happened hadn't when he died of a heart attack and everything came out).
A much older case was back circa 1850 when a couple married with neither telling the other that an earlier spouse was likely still around. The man, Talbot Henry Green, a prominent merchant, ran for mayor of San Francisco then local news reported he was actually Paul Geddes and had a wife and children and was wanted for fraud back East. He headed back East vowing to clear his name and but didn't. She, Sarah Armstrong Montgomery Green Wallis, eventually got a divorce and married a third time (her first husband who was last seen heading for Hawaii was apparently never heard from again though never declared dead either) and has a park named after her in Palo Alto (Green has a street in San Francisco).
QI?
Not as weird as the fact that you can marry and have sex at 16 but if you take any photos of the act you can be done for making indecent images of children.
One allied oddity in Scotland is that 16 year olds are legally responsible in a lot of circumstances - they can, for example, sign their own absence notes from school, and strictly speaking have to give permission for educational info to be shared with parents.
*Checks Wikipedia* So he did.
I'm shocked to think QI could ever be less than accurate ...
(@Gee D : QI.)