The Law
How Many Wives Can One Man Have?
It is possible for a person to have more than one spouse in Hongkong without being prosecuted for bigamy, provided that the second marriage ceremony was solemnized outside the Territory.
This is contrary to the law in most countries where the marriage contract is a strictly monogamous arrangement.
Many lawyers who specialize in family law have stated that the Hongkong Authorities recognize any marriage which is legally constituted and recognised in the country where that marriage took place.
It is possible for someone to marry 2 separate spouses in 2 different countries and bring both of the husbands or wives
to Hongkong.
Although the Hongkong Authorities will probably only regard the first marriage as being legitimate, and therefore only accord full legal rights to the first spouse, it is not
Going to the chapel --
but how many times?
possible for the person who has engaged in a bigamous contract to be prosecuted by the Hongkong courts if the second marriage took place outside of Hongkong.
In Hongkong, the Offences Against the Person Ordi- nance, Chapter 212, states:
Any person who, being married, marries any other person during the life of the former hus- band or wife shall be guilty of felony, and shall be liable to imprisonment for 7 years...
According to an eminent lawyer to whom TARGET spoke, 'It is a universally recognised principal that the power of legislation in constituting offences and enacting punish- ments and penalties is limited to the territory over which the legislature has jurisdiction.
"Therefore, the power of legislation can only be extended to outside the local area if ex-territorial criminal offences are
made law by express enactment, otherwise the law will be interpreted as only being efficacious within the limits of the territory.'
In the UK, British subjects are criminally liable if they enter into a bigamous marriage, regardless of where the marriages were celebrated.
Thus, in the case of Earl Russell in 1901, when, after the House of Lords refused to grant him a divorce from his first wife, he entered into a second marriage outside Great Britain, he was prosecuted for bigamy.
As a peer, he was tried by the House of Lords, found guilty of the offence, and sentenced to 3 months' imprisonment in the First Division, the most comfortable form of imprison-
ment then in existence.
The reason he was convicted was because the English law read: 'Whether the second marriage shall have taken place in England or Ireland or elsewhere.'
This section still exists in English law but it is not part of
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