October 19, 2020

Law Commission Consultation on Weddings Law

As we have previously reported the Law Commission are conducting a consultation on potential changes to weddings law (sic). Many of the proposals will affect civil partnerships, mixed and same-sex, and we have spoken to both the Law Commission and the General Equalities Office who have confirmed that there is an ‘assumed overlap’ between regulations for marriage and civil partnerships. The Law Commission are very keen to hear the views of the civil partnership community and have asked for our help in publicising the consultation.

After you have completed the opening obligatory segment https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/intro/ feel free to answer as few or as many questions as you wish. We think that couples wanting or who have had a mixed-sex civil partnership will be particularly interested in looking at the following areas.

Chapter 4 – Preliminaries – how and when to give notice https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/subpage.2020-06-25.9417192246/

Chapter 7 – Location, relaxing the rules on where registration can take place https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/subpage.2020-04-29.4120981016/

Q67, Chapter 11 – Special types of wedding, looking at how to manage in future national emergencies https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/subpage.2020-06-29.6847463031/

You might also be interested in Chapter 12 Fees https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/subpage.2020-05-01.5140518453/ and Chapter 13 Impacts https://consult.justice.gov.uk/law-commission/weddings/consultation/subpage.2020-06-30.0412691154/

We hope to send an ECP response on behalf of the campaign so do please let us know your views in any of the areas in which you feel strongly. Please email us at hello@equalcivilpartnerships.org.uk and mark the subject as Law Commission Consultation

You can read the full consultation and proposals here