Getting Married: A Consultation Paper on Weddings Law Consultation Paper 247 Law Commission Consultation Paper No 247 Getting Married: A Consultation Paper on Weddings Law 03 September 2020 © Crown copyright 2020 This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/. Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. This publication is available at https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/weddings/. THE LAW COMMISSION – HOW WE CONSULT About the Law Commission: The Law Commission was set up by section 1 of the Law Commissions Act 1965 for the purpose of promoting the reform of the law. The Law Commissioners are: The Rt Hon Lord Justice Green, Chair, Professor Sarah Green, Professor Nicholas Hopkins, Professor Penney Lewis, and Nicholas Paines QC. The Chief Executive is Phillip Golding. Topic of this consultation: We are consulting on weddings law – the rules governing which formalities a couple needs to comply with in order to be legally married, from giving notice through to registration of the marriage. Geographical scope: This consultation applies to the law of England and Wales. Duration of the consultation: We invite responses from 3 September 2020 to 3 December 2020. Responses to the consultation may be submitted using an online form at: https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings. Where possible, it would be helpful if this form was used. Alternatively, comments may be sent: By email to [email protected] OR By post to Weddings Team, Law Commission, 1st Floor, Tower, 52 Queen Anne’s Gate, London, SW1H 9AG. If you send your comments by post, it would be helpful if, whenever possible, you could also send them by email. Availability of materials: The consultation paper is available on our website at https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/weddings/. We are committed to providing accessible publications. If you require this consultation paper to be made available in a different format please email [email protected] or call 020 3334 0200. After the consultation: We will analyse the responses to the consultation, which will inform our final recommendations for reform to Government, which we will publish in a report. Consultation Principles: The Law Commission follows the Consultation Principles set out by the Cabinet Office, which provide guidance on type and scale of consultation, duration, timing, accessibility and transparency. The Principles are available on the Cabinet Office website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consultation-principles-guidance. Information provided to the Law Commission: We aim to be transparent in our decision- making, and to explain the basis on which we have reached conclusions. We may publish or i disclose information you provide in response to Law Commission papers, including personal information. For example, we may publish an extract of your response in Law Commission publications, or publish the response itself. We may also share responses with Government. Additionally, we may be required to disclose the information, such as in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We will process your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. Consultation responses are most effective where we are able to report which consultees responded to us, and what they said. If you consider that it is necessary for all or some of the information that you provide to be treated as confidential and so neither published nor disclosed, please contact us before sending it. Please limit the confidential material to the minimum, clearly identify it and explain why you want it to be confidential. We cannot guarantee that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances and an automatic disclaimer generated by your IT system will not be regarded as binding on the Law Commission. Alternatively, you may want your response to be anonymous. That means that we may refer to what you say in your response, but will not reveal that the information came from you. You might want your response to be anonymous because it contains sensitive information about you or your family, or because you are worried about other people knowing what you have said to us. We list who responded to our consultations in our reports. If you provide a confidential response your name will appear in that list. If your response is anonymous we will not include your name in the list unless you have given us permission to do so. Any queries about the contents of this Privacy Notice can be directed to: [email protected]. ii Contents PAGE Glossary ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 The COVID-19 pandemic 2 The law of weddings 4 What we mean by “weddings law” 4 The current law and its history 5 The Law Commission’s Scoping Paper and the case for reform 7 Previous calls for reform 7 The Scoping Paper 9 The case for reform 9 Developments since the Scoping Paper 13 Recent reforms elsewhere 15 Personal experience of the current law 17 Personal experiences with weddings during the COVID-19 pandemic 17 The current project 18 The scope of our project 19 Structure of the project 22 Format of this Consultation Paper 24 Acknowledgements and thanks 27 The team working on the project 28 CHAPTER 2: THE CURRENT LAW 29 Overview of the legal framework 29 Civil weddings 31 Register office 31 Approved premises 38 Religious weddings 42 Anglican 43 Jewish 54 Quaker 58 Other religious groups 60 Legal framework for special circumstances 65 Those who are terminally ill 65 Marriages of the housebound or detained 67 Marriages in naval, military and air force chapels 69 CHAPTER 3: OVERVIEW OF OUR PROPOSED SCHEME 73 iii Introduction 73 Preliminaries 75 Civil preliminaries 76 Anglican preliminaries 78 Officiants 79 The requirement for an authorised officiant 79 The role and responsibilities of an officiant 79 The categories of officiant 80 Withdrawal of authorisation 83 Ceremony 84 Location 86 Registration 87 CHAPTER 4: PRELIMINARIES 89 Introduction 89 Civil preliminaries 91 Issues 92 Options for reform 95 Consultation questions 108 Anglican preliminaries 110 Issues with the current law 112 Options for reform 117 Consultation questions 120 The difficulty of rationalising the requirements 121 Universal civil preliminaries 123 CHAPTER 5: OFFICIANTS 127 Introduction 127 The current law 129 Issues 131 Inequality of treatment 131 Lack of respect for the wishes and beliefs of individuals 133 Complexity and lack of clarity 134 Unnecessary regulations 135 Options for reform 136 Identifying a common concept of an “officiant” 136 Identifying a common set of duties for all officiants 137 Identifying a clear process for authorising officiants 140 Identifying the criteria that officiants should have to fulfil 159 Identifying a common set of responsibilities for all officiants 167 Clarifying how officiants should be monitored and de-authorised 169 CHAPTER 6: THE WEDDING CEREMONY 173 iv Introduction 173 The form of ceremony 174 Issues 176 Options for reform 180 Consultation 189 Translation 191 Religious content in civil weddings 191 Issues 193 Options for reform 195 Consultation 198 A religious ceremony after a register office wedding 199 Two witnesses 200 Open doors 201 Criticism of the law 202 Options for reform 203 Consultation 204 CHAPTER 7: LOCATION 205 Introduction 205 Criticisms of the current law 206 Civil wedding venues 208 Religious wedding venues 219 Non-religious belief wedding venues 225 Independent celebrant wedding venues 226 Options for reform 226 Retention of the current system, but with a wider range of locations permitted 226 Pre-approval of place by local authorities, with no substantive restrictions on the types of locations permitted 228 No limits on the types of locations permitted, with approval by the officiant 230 Consultation 232 Where should weddings be legally permitted to take place? 232 What process of pre-approval, if any, is necessary? 238 CHAPTER 8: REGISTRATION 245 Introduction 245 Current law 246 Issues 246 Options for reform 247 Schedule system 247 Information to be recorded 247 Returning the schedule 248 Language 249 v Electronic registration 249 Correction of errors 251 Consultation 251 CHAPTER 9: EQUALITY LAW AND RELIGIOUS WEDDINGS 253 Introduction 253 The policy background and our Terms of Reference 254 Religious organisations 254 Non-religious belief organisations and independent officiants 254 Registration officers 255 Special provisions under the current law 255 Same-sex weddings 255 Weddings involving transgender people 258 Special provisions under our proposed scheme 259 Same-sex weddings 259 Weddings involving transgender people 261 Secular venues and other services 261 CHAPTER 10: VALIDITY AND OFFENCES 263 Introduction 263 Validity 264 Issues 268 Options for reform 275 Consultation 290 The time-limit for petitioning for nullity 294 Issues 295 Options for reform 296 Offences 297 Issues 298 Options for reform 300 Consultation 302 Religious-only weddings 303 Why do religious-only weddings arise? 303 The effect of our provisional proposals on religious-only weddings 305 The limits of our proposed reforms 306 CHAPTER 11: SPECIAL TYPES OF WEDDING 313 Introduction 313 Weddings involving people who are terminally ill, detained, or housebound 314 Current law 314 Issues 317 Options for reform – people who have a terminal illness 317 Options