The Hague Convention on Marriages
The Hague Convention on the Celebration and Recognition of the Validity of Marriages (1978) obliges signatories to recognise marriages validly entered into in foreign countries, with certain reservations.
What follows is not legal advice, so if you believe any of these issues are relevant to your marriage, please seek an expert legal opinion.
The full text of this convention is availablehere.
The Very Quick Overview
What countries agreed to when they signed the convention can really be summed up in two sentences:
- All countries (signatory or not) are free to make their own laws and set their own requirements for legal recognition of the marriage of foreign nationals
- All signatory countries must recognise legal marriages which took place in a foreign country, provided they comply with their laws.
Some Details of the Hague Convention
In the Country where the marriage takes place
This may or may not be a signatory country.
The convention states a marriage between foreign nationals should be legally certified in that country provided:
- The internal laws of the country are complied with
- The residency or citizenship regulations are complied with
- acceptable evidence regarding the parties eligibility is produced
In other words, countries are free to make their own laws, set their own residency requirements and ask for whatever evidence they wish to have.
Countries which recognise the Foreign Marriage
The convention obliges signatories to legally recognise marriages certificates from any foreign country whose requirements have been met (as above), with some exceptions:
- one of the spouses was already married
- the spouses were closely related to one another
- one of the spouses was underage and did not have the required consent
- one of the spouses did not have the mental capacity to consent
- one of the spouses did not freely consent to the marriage.
The Hague Convention & the USA
The USA is not a signatory to the Hague convention. Theoretically this means that the USA is not obliged to recognise foreign marriages without adding additional legal or documentary requirements.
In practice however, The US government recognises all foreign marriages that are recognised by the country in which they took place, provided the parties to the marriage would also have been allowed to marry in the USA.
If you have any doubts about this, contact the office of the attorney general of the state in the United States where the parties to the marriage live.
Why it Matters
If this seems blindingly obvious - and it does rather - then why did they bother?
The convention set out to ensure that a valid marriage certificate issued any country would be recognised in another country without any additional legal or documentary requirements.
This means that signatory countries cannot require their citizens who marry abroad to either
- have a separate marriage in their own country
or - to separately register their marriage, or acquire a marriage certificate, in their own country
This convention can be a source of some confusion, as many people believe they can only marry in countries that are signatories to the convention. That is not the case, the foreign country does not have to be a party to the convention.
When a Marriage may not be Recognised
A signatory country may refuse to recognise a marriage if it is is "manifestly incompatible" with its public policy.
Essentially this means that signatory states are still free to make their own marriage laws, based on their public policy, and refuse to recognise marriages that do not comply with them.