-
possibility of such abuses would not be removed if there were only one stage in a lawful marriage registration - it would
appear that the risk of misunderstanding would be considerably lessened. 33. A question that would almost certainly give rise to difficulty if two-stage marriages were required by law would be the status of marriages of which the first but not the second stage took place. Such situations were fairly frequently encountered during the early days of the application of the Marriage Law, 1950, in China, and they caused the authorities there no little difficulty; at the expense of the legal certainty which is so important a factor in the law relating to personal status, the courts had to be equipped with a discretion. whether to regard such marriages as null and void, or as valid but imperfectly constituted unions. It is believed that such a solution would be quite unacceptable in the framework of a common law system such as that of Hong Kong, and it would of course give rise to difficulties abroad. However, there is little doubt that these cases would arise, whether accidentally (e.g. on the death of one party) or intentionally. Having regard to the well-known reluctance of many Chinese people to have any contact with officials or government agencies of any kind, it would hardly be surprising if many cases of this kind occurred because of simple reluctance to approach the registry. Where one party changed his or her mind there might be considerable hardship, particularly for women induced by a purported marriage to cohabit with a man who never agreed to take the step of registration. All members accordingly took the view that a period of fourteen days between the "form of marriage" and the registration would be excessively long on this ground, and they would suggest that if two-stage marriages are introduced (as they all hope will not be the case) the period allowed should not exceed three days, public holidays excepted. Further, they all agreed that if two-stage marriages were adopted, a procedure would have to be introduced to compel registration by one party at the suit of the other, where a "form of marriage" had been gone through - a development which the members of the Sub-Committee would not view with any enthusiasm.
34. The majority of the members of the Sub-Committee (de Basto and Dicks) went further and took the view that on the
19