COUPLES who secured court permission to by pass the requirement for three months notice of marriage may not be legally wed, a Fine Gael TD and solicitor has warned.
Mr Alan Shatter said the wording of the Family Law Act, 1995, left a doubt as to whether anyone who applied for the court waiver before August 1st last year, the deadline for the three month provision, was legally married.
His comments came as the Government confirmed yesterday it is preparing legislation to regularise a number of marriages celebrated since the introduction of the notice requirement, because errors in the registration process have rendered the marriages invalid.
The amending measure is expected to confer legitimacy on all marriages celebrated since last August, where they would have been valid except for failure to comply with the provision on notification.
Replying to a written Dail question yesterday, the Minister for Health, whose Department includes the office of the Registrar General, said that officials were studying 31 cases in which the criteria for a valid marriage had not been met.
Mr Noonan said these arose chiefly from the failure to provide three months' written notice to the relevant registrar. He regretted the inconvenience caused and said his officials were working with the Department of Equality and Law Reform on all possible ways to address the problem, including amending legislation.
But Mr Shatter said he feared, the number of potentially invalid marriages could be greater, because the legality of court waivers prior to August 1st was open to challenge. He urged that "a simple but carefully drafted" piece of amending legislation be rushed through to regularise all the marriages affected.
He said he had been contacted by some people who were worried about this.
It was a matter of concern that in cases of marital break up, one partner could challenge the validity of the marriage to escape financial responsibility, Mr Shatter, added. But couples whose marriages are not valid in law also faced a number of other potential problems.
The least of these was that they would not be entitled to married person's tax allowance. This situation could be averted by the introduction of the amending legislation before April 5th, but would otherwise have to be addressed in the 1997 Finance Act.
