The Law Commission’s Proposals

Abstract

This chapter explores Law Commission’s consultation paper, published in September 2020, which proposed a transformation the law on how people get married. The chapter falls into three parts. The first part introduces the Law Commission’s approach, it looks at what was excluded from its terms of reference and the main changes to how people get married that are proposed. The second part then discusses the most radical change proposed by the Law Commission: the move from the Marriage Act 1949’s focus on registering buildings towards what the Law Commission has styled an officiant system and how this would accommodate non-religious marriages. The final part looks at how the scoping paper discussed the issue of unregistered religious marriages and the extent to which the reforms suggested would help to mitigate that issue, including an examination of what the Law Commission suggests in terms of the law on validity and on criminal offences concerning the solemnisation of marriage. Taken together, the proposals do not provide a magic bullet solution but they do provide important steps forward. There are points of contention but overall the proposals if enacted would provide a great deal of improvement.