A succinct post on the French Supreme Court judgment 18-19665 MP v ML of 19 September last. Thank you Hélène Péroz for alerting us to the judgment. A French couple, married in 1995, file for divorce in 2012 when the husband discovers his wife has been married before, in Las Vegas, 1981. He requests his marriage be declared invalid on the grounds of bigamy. To settle the ‘divorce’ the courts therefore need to first settle the incidental question or Vorfrage of prior marriage, much like in the archetypal Vorfrage judgment of Schwebel v Unger.
Under French law consent to marriage is covered by the lex patriae which for both partners in this case is French. The Supreme Court confirms the lower courts’ discretion to find as a matter of fact whether or not there was such consent, which in casu they had found there was not on the basis of the wife having presented the Vegas trip to her friends as not being of real consequence; no banns of marriage having been published, no effort having been undertaken by the partners to have their Vegas ‘wedding’ registered in France, no reference to the marriage having been made at the time of registration of the birth of their child, and both partners having entered into relationships after the ‘marriage’.
Geert.
(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 1, Heading 1.4.
gavc law - geert van calster 