Conflict of marriage laws
The lex fori, or proper jurisdiction to adjudicate legal disputes, will usually be the state where the spouses have sought to make their matrimonial home.This state will usually have a clear and direct interest in the applications of its policies to regulate the nature of relationships permitted to confer the status of husband and wife within their territorial boundaries.Such measure represented a major shift, because custom marriages were often potentially or actually polygamous as against public policy, and were not recognized under the new law.However, other states permit informal marriages to acquire legal status and, where this happens, there is no reason in principle why international recognition should not follow.In Taiwan, which follows a variation of the Napoleonic Code (received by way of Japan), the presumption is that each country maintains a central registry of its citizens, including their marital status.Since the two polities did not share records, the result was a pattern of legally recognized second marriages, despite the ban on polygamy by both sides of the Taiwan Strait.For example, in the United Kingdom, the Immigration Rules 1986 were introduced to bar persons under the age of 16 from entering the UK in reliance upon their status as a spouse.As to transnational recognition, it will be difficult to disturb the validity of the marriage if no complaint of coercion was made around the time the ceremony was performed in the lex loci celebrationis or immediately the parties entered the state where proceedings were commenced.In Christian cultures, the Biblical proscriptions contained in Leviticus 18:6–18 are used as the basis for restricting marriage between persons who are deemed to be too closely related to each other.More generally, the restrictions fall into two classes (and based on Old Testament laws): Several exceptions have been described for various Biblical figures, incestuous relationships such as Abraham and Sarah,[2] Nachor and Melcha,[3] Lot and his Daughters,[4] and Amram and Jochebed.But, for less controversial purposes, most states are willing to recognise actually polygamous marriages as valid so long as the parties had the capacity to enter into such relationships and the ceremonies were effective under the lex loci celebrationis.As of 2022, same-sex marriage is legally recognized (nationwide or in some parts) in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands,[nb 1] New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States[nb 2] and Uruguay.