Careful wedding planning pays dividends, says Mark Irving
The recently published 2011 Census results contain some headline-grabbing revelations for those advising international clients.
Some 7.5 million of the reporting population were born outside of England and Wales, half arriving over the last 10 years; nearly five million of us hold a foreign passport; more than 55% of Londoners do not classify themselves as white-British.
Earlier figures, released in August 2012, reveal that one in four babies born in England and Wales in 2011 were born to mothers who were born outside the UK, 75% of whom were in a marriage or civil partnership. In London, 57% of babies born in 2011 were born to mothers who were born outside the UK.
Pouring such statistics into the melting pot raises all sorts of cross-jurisdictional issues for the family lawyer. In this article, I deal with two of them, namely:
- when is a marriage not a marriage (as recognised by the law of England and Wales)?; and
- what impact does a “non-marriage” have upon an individual’s ability to make financial claims in England and Wales
