MARRIAGE PUZZLES

Shannon News, 30 August 1929, Page 2

MARRIAGE PUZZLES

That the prohibited degrees of marriage in the Praycr-Book are still in operation, with only tAvo exceptions, is emphasised by the annulment in the Divorce Court of a marrige ceremony which a Avoman petitioner Avent through with the former husb;md of her mother's deceased natural sister. The mother's sister, being illegitimate. Avas not the petitioner's aunt in the usual sense.

By the Prayer-Book a Avoman may not marry her mother's sister's husband, and the courts have held that this applies to blood relations of the prohibited degrees, Avhcther they are legitimate or not. There has boon a strong movement in late years to relax the rigidity of the Prayer-Book. Tn 1907 Parliament made it* legal for a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, and in 1921 for a woman to marry her deceased husband's brother.

There it stopped but for several years past a private Bill has been introduced to allow people to marry others who are only relatives by marriage and not by blood —for instance, to let n man niarrv a niece, not of his oavm, but of his deceased Avife. Every time, however, the Bill has been lost in the annual "massacre of the innocents."