2
Ohject of rules was
achieve
universality of personal status.
3.
Dissolution of marriage affects the personal
status of the parties to the marriage. It has long
been recognised as of cardinal importance that a person's
status should be universal, Failure to achieve this
in regard to marital status has led to the "limping
marriage"; that is to say, a marriage which is regarded as valid and subsisting in one country but as invalid
and non-existent in another country. To achieve this
universality of status the English Courts evolved
exceedingly strict rules. These rules are now in the process of being relaxed, if not actually discarded, because it has come to be realised that too high a price was being exacted for a goal that has remained obstinately beyond reach.
The principle that the law of husband's domicile is paramount.
4.
The basic principle on which these rules were
founded was that the law of the husband's domicile was
paramount and exclusive in testing the validity of a dissolution (ii).
Defects in the principle.
5.
The domicile rules unrealistic.
Three points can be made about this principle,
and they go a long way towards explaining why the price of applying this principle has become exorbitant and why it has not achieved universality of status:
countin
(a) The municipal law of the law whose Courts
are seized of the case is used to determine
what is or was the domicile of the husband.
The English rules are rigid in this respect. They have, however, an unrealistic look when applied to the Hong Kong situation. This is because a man who has lived here most of
his life and who can probably never go back
to China is nevertheless likely to be treated
under these rules as having retained a
domicile in China if he has been born there.
(ii) Le Mesurier
Le Mesurier
(1895) A.C. 517.
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