TNAG-0189-FCO40-225-Chinese-marriages-in-Hong-Kong-1969 — Page 83

NOTE:

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Need to consider development of the rules of P.I.L.

Recognition in Courts abroad of dissolutions

of marriage by mutual consent as proposed in

the White Paper

Both the McDouall/Heenan Report and the

White Paper were concerned to find acceptable solutions to urgent personal local problems : personal in that

and local the problems concerned individual marriages;

in that the problems had come about because of Hong

The Kong's geographical and political situation. difficulties of this task might have proved daunting had there been superimposed the responsibility for considering the extent to which matrimonial bonds forged and sundered in accordance with the proposed solutions would receive legal recognition in other countries. This is not to suggest that the authors of these documents paid no regard to the rules of Private International Law (referred to hereafter as P.I.L.) and their consequences for local residents: indeed, in dealing with divorce by mutual consent the McDouall/Heenan Report made a conscious recommendation "to legislate for Hong Kong, and leave it to other territories to decide whether or not to recognise any particular form of dissolution of marriage made valid in Hong Kong".(1) It is also true that these rules of P.I.L. imperil dissolutions of marriages more than the actual unions themselves. The purpose of this Note is to consider the likelihood of dissolution by mutual consent, effected in Hong Kong, being accorded legal recognition abroad and to make recommendations

accordingly.

2.

If these recommendations are to be understood and the inherent dangers appreciated, it becomes necessary to refer to the legal development in this field over the past 75 years. This summary of that development is intended to be neither comprehensive nor a study in depth of the legal principļes involved.

(1) Appendix C McDouall/

Heenan Report para. 39 (4).

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