TNAG-0189-FCO40-225-Chinese-marriages-in-Hong-Kong-1969 — Page 50

(2) where either of the parties to such a marriage has subsequently married someone else, the earlier marriage shall be recognised in law only for such period as it sub- sisted."

38. The Sub-Committee is in agreement with the purpose of this Recommendation, which would if enacted fill a long-felt need in the law of Hong Kong. However, the Sub-Committee feels that the machinery recommended in the Report is somewhat inelegant, setting up as it would separate methods and criteria for the retro- spective recognition of Chinese Modern Marriages and for the definition and recognition of Chinese Customary Marriages of the older type. The Sub-Committee would urge strongly that the purpose of Recommendations No. 2 and 4 should be combined by producing a single or alternative definition to cover both forms of marriage, which would accord them similar status. The Sub- Committee is of the opinion that it should be an over-riding concern, in drafting legislation, that the creation of a series of slightly different forms of marital status should be avoided as far as possible, a point already made with respect to the new form of registration. Theoretically, there may be some logical basis for making separate transitional provisions in respect of Chinese Customary Marriages and Chinese Modern Marriages, though it is felt that the actual forms as well as the differing intentions of the parties to these categories of marriages may in practice be found to coalesce to a greater extent than the authors of the Report seem to have realized when they set up the categories, so that they might not in fact represent very sound alternatives for separate treatment by the legislature. In any case, it would seem that only a historical purpose would be served by establishing this separate machinery. The argument is sometimes heard (and it appears to be the basis of some of the thinking in the Report) that, as applied in the Colony, these two kinds of marriage ceremony differ not only in form but in giving rise to two quite separate types of matrimonial status which differ in their essential characteristics. Thus it is said that a marriage celebrated in Chinese Customary form is always potentially polygamous in the contemplation of the law of Hong Kong, whereas a Chinese Modern Marriage celebrated in Hong Kong, deriving

23