Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/2185

Rh notice will be obtainable on request and the payment of a fee of 1s. Where the marriage is to be by licence, a certificate of notice and the licence to marry will be obtainable, if there be no lawful impediment, at the expiration of one whole day after the entry of the notice, upon payment of 1s. for the certificate and £1 10s. for the licence. Upon a licence to marry, a stamp duty of 10s. is also payable.

Places in which the marriage may be solemnized.—

1. In any church within the district of the superintendent registrar, in the same way as a marriage after publication of banns, except that where the authority to marry is by virtue of a licence so obtained, it cannot be thus solemnized without the consent of the incumbent. The certificate (and licence, if such there be) must be delivered to the person officiating.

2. In any building certified according to law as a place of religious worship and registered as a place in which marriages may be solemnized; and according to such form or ceremony as the parties think fit to adopt, provided that in some part of the ceremony each of the parties declare that they take the other for their husband and wife respectively. The marriage must be with open doors, between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.; and in the presence of some registrar of the district in which the building is registered, or, if the parties prefer, in the presence of some person certified as having been duly authorized for the purpose by the trustees or other governng body of the building or of some registered building in the same registration district. In either case, the marriage must also be in the presence of two or more credible witnesses.

Where a registrar attends he is entitled to a fee of 5s., or if the marriage be by licence, 10s.; and where he is not required to attend, a fee of 4s. is payable to the superintendent registrar, or if the marriage be by licence, a fee of 6s. 6d.

3. At the office and in the presence of the superintendent registrar, and in the presence of some registrar of the district, as well as two witnesses; and under the same conditions as in the previous case, except that there can be no religious or other ceremony. A fee of 10s. is payable to the registrar if the marriage be by licence, otherwise 5s.

The parties may, if they like, subsequently add any religious ceremony, but it will not supersede the marriage before the registrar, and will not be entered in the parish register.

Marriage when solemnized cannot be impeached on Ground of Non-compliance with Formalities.—When the marriage has been actually solemnized, its validity cannot then be questioned either on the ground that the parties did not comply with the requirements as to residence, or that any consent to the marriage which was required was not, in fact, obtained, or that the building in which it took place was not duly registered.

Marriage of Divorced Persons.—A clergyman of the Church of England may decline to marry a divorced person, but he cannot refuse to allow another clergyman within the diocese to officiate at his church for that purpose.

Certificates of Marriage may be obtained, on giving the name and date, either from the incumbent or from the superintendent registrar of marriages for the district in which the marriage took place, or from Somerset House, on payment of a fee of 2s. 6d. and a stamp duty of 1d. denoted by an adhesive stamp, which must be cancelled by the person giving the certificate.

MARRIED WOMEN, Property of

In 1882 the position of married women was entirely changed by the married Women's Property Act of that year; under which every woman married since January 1, 1883, is entitled to have and to hold as her separate estate any property which belonged to her at the time of marriage, or may be