Supreme Court, in which case legal aid should be available. The Sub-Committee believes that the merit of providing a really com- prehensive system of Post-Registration, leaving as few bona fide unions as possible out in the cold, outweighs possible objections on the score of complexity.
49. The Sub-Committee also realizes that recognitions and Post-Registrations under the rather liberal rule it has proposed might not be invariably recognized by foreign tribunals in cases where the marriage recognized or Post-Registered in Hong Kong had actually been celebrated outside the Colony. However, as regards recognition by the courts of the common-law countries, and the majority of European states, which take domicile as the connecting factor with the personal law, this possibility would be small in cases where the parties had acquired a domicile in Hong Kong, at the time of the marriage or subsequently, which still subsisted at the time of recognition or Post-Registration. Indeed, insofar as Starkowski v A. G. (1954) A. C. 155 represents the rule at common law, the validating effect of such a provision might be wider, embracing those who lost their Hong Kong domicile, though in Starkowski's case the validating statute was an amendment to the lex loci contractus, so that the Hong Kong legislation might be applied under that rule only to marriages actually contracted in the Colony. In any event, the Sub-Committee feels that the possibility that not all cases within the scope of the legislation they propose for the Colony would be regarded abroad as subject to the law of Hong Kong at all should not deter the legislature from enacting a rule that might save a substantial number of people from the misery and hardship of finding themselves legally un- married after many years of living together as man and wife.
50. In this connection the Sub-Committee notes that the authors of the Report decided to abandon the suggestion that back-dated marriage in accordance with the Marriage Ordinance be made available to persons now joined only by what has been referred to as Reputed Marriage; see Report pp. 63 to 64. This would in reality have been a form of Post-Registration, though distinguished from the forms of Post-Registration just discussed in several ways. After careful thought, the Sub-Committee has
31
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.