Recommendation:
Legislation to be enacted whereby the parties to a retro- spectively recognized marriage may if they so wish, and subject to their producing evidence satisfactory to the Registrar, post-register their marriage.”
41. The Sub-Committee approves this recommendation insofar as it establishes a technique which would obviate the need for the clumsy and probably unpopular requirement of remarriage. However, it is felt that the scope of the proposed device of Post-Registration is too narrowly conceived in the Report. In conformity with its view that the creation of multiple forms of status should, if possible, be avoided, the Sub-Committee believes that Post-Registration should be afforded to persons married before the Appointed Date according not only to Chinese Modern Marriage forms but also to Chinese Customary Marriage forms. Indeed, the Sub-Committee was at a loss to understand why the authors of the Report did not propose to extend the very obvious and desirable advantages of Post-Registration to Chinese Customary Marriages, unless, perhaps, it was so decided on the basis of the doubtful belief that the former are monogamous: see paras. 38 to 39 supra.
42. The Sub-Committee recognizes, of course, that the Post- Registration of polygamous marriages would present problems. It would propose, however, that since Chinese Modern Marriages appear to be as potentially polygamous as Chinese Customary Marriages, the problem can be solved in the same way for both types of union. The Sub-Committee would suggest that all marriages celebrated before the Appointed Date and recognized by virtue of their satisfying the definition already proposed (which would embrace both forms of marriage) should be capable of Post- Registration, at the request of both parties, or at the request or declaration of the Court in which the marriage has been recognized after both parties have been heard. The nature of Post-Registration would be variable in accordance with the facts of each marriage. (i) Marriages which are monogamous in fact at the time of recognition (even though potentially polygamous) should be Post- Registered as such, it being made clear that no polygamous relationship could lawfully be contracted after the Appointed
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