marriage be prepared, regards the scope of the definition proposed in the Report as too narrow. The suggestion has already been made that the definition should be wide enough to embrace both Chinese Customary Marriages and Chinese Modern Marriages: see para. 38 above.
45. The Sub-Committee has based its views on the assumption that the proposal for the definition of Chinese Customary Marriages was introduced with the intention merely of simplifying the evidential requirements for establishing the existence of such marriages. As noted already, the Sub-Committee feels that the function of the definition ought to be expanded so that it embraces both Chinese Customary Marriages and Chinese Modern Marriages which take place before the Appointed Date. Among other advantages, such a definition would enormously assist in the proof of such marriages, celebrated in Hong Kong, before foreign tribunals.
46. The Sub-Committee would also like to draw attention to the need to frame the definition in a fairly liberal and inclusive way. Inasmuch as its purpose would be the recognition of marriages already in existence before the Appointed Date, there would appear to be little harm in making the definition a fairly wide one. In the view of the Sub-Committee, the definition should be in an alternative form. The first two limbs should cover first, Chinese Customary Marriages as they are usually celebrated in the Colony (if a suitable formula can be found, as the Sub-Committee believes it can), and second, Chinese Modern Marriages. A third limb of the definition should cover marriages in respect of which it appears that the parties or those responsible for arranging the marriage have attempted to solemnize the marriage in accordance with any legal or customary forms which they might reasonably have sup- posed to be applicable to the case. In view of the confusing mass of rules and suppositions surrounding the marriages of Chinese people in Hong Kong, it is believed that it would be appropriate for the law to show some generosity in recognizing marriages in which an intention to comply with some form which the parties might have supposed to be the correct one was manifest. The Sub-Committee found some assistance in the analogous provisions of the Hague Convention on the Conflicts of Laws Relating to Testa-
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