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Nikah-Only Marriage Is Non-marriage

It is surprising that the English law should consider an internationally recog­nised form of religious marriage, at least in Islamic countries, as not capable of being a marriage and giving rise to some consequences upon dissolution.

As explained above, to effect a valid marriage compliance with the formalities as set out the 1949 Act must be followed. The statute deals with those mar­riage ceremonies that fall short of some of the formalities, giving rise to a void marriage over a valid one. But what the minimum requirements are in order for a ceremony to have created a legal marriage is still unknown, and this ques­tion has become an urgent one following the supposed increase in informal Muslim marriages being conducted in this jurisdiction.

Nikah-only marriages when conducted in England or Wales are not only not capable of being valid marriages, they are now not even considered void marriages either, but are subsumed under the newly created category of “non­marriage”. As set out above, a void marriage carries the same financial conse­quences as a valid one. A non-marriage however has profound consequences on the parties. Unlike a void marriage, there are no financial orders available to non-marriage parties, although it is a serious question what exactly the differ­ences are between a void marriage and non-marriage. To answer this question, the next section provides case analysis on two key cases in this area of law.

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Source: Oberauer Norbert, Prief Yvonne, Qubaja Ulrike (eds.). Legal Pluralism in Muslim Contexts. Brill,2019. — x, 258 p.. 2019
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