Marriage is a concept that is so familiar that we might rarely, if ever, stop to consider what it actually is. Even those people who dream of a big white wedding, or declare that they are positively against the institution, mostly do so without genuinely understanding the implications of marriage in our society. This article examines the legal meaning of marriage in contemporary Australia.
What is marriage in Australia?
Marriage can be described as a contract, but it is special category of contract that confers a status on those who enter into such an agreement. This status involves a bundle of rights, privileges, obligations and responsibilities.
Some of these rights and privileges are merely social and informal, such as the adoption of a spouse’s last name or wedding day celebrations, but there are also legal rights, privileges and obligations that come along with marriage that are encoded in Commonwealth and state legislation.
What is marriage in Australia?
Marriage can be described as a contract, but it is special category of contract that confers a status on those who enter into such an agreement. This status involves a bundle of rights, privileges, obligations and responsibilities.
Some of these rights and privileges are merely social and informal, such as the adoption of a spouse’s last name or wedding day celebrations, but there are also legal rights, privileges and obligations that come along with marriage that are encoded in Commonwealth and state legislation.
What is marriage in Australia?
Marriage can be described as a contract, but it is special category of contract that confers a status on those who enter into such an agreement. This status involves a bundle of rights, privileges, obligations and responsibilities.
Some of these rights and privileges are merely social and informal, such as the adoption of a spouse’s last name or wedding day celebrations, but there are also legal rights, privileges and obligations that come along with marriage that are encoded in Commonwealth and state legislation.
What does the Australian Constitution say about marriage?
The Australian Constitution 1901 (Cth) gives the Commonwealth the power to make laws about marriage in Section 51(xxi). Conferring this power to the Commonwealth was designed to allow uniformity in relation to marriage across the different colonies.
Despite having the power to legislate to introduce uniformity around marriage, the Commonwealth did not do so until the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth). After Federation and before 1961, each state continued to regulate marriage separately. For instance, in 1942, when Tasmania required girls to be at least 16 to marry, in New South Wales (NSW) it was perfectly legal for a girl to marry at 12. The result being that a young wife who moved with her husband from NSW to Tasmania would go from being legally married to no longer having her marriage recognised.
The door that was firmly shut on marriage equality in 2004 was cracked open again in 2009, when the Rudd Government introduced reforms designed to equalise treatment for same-sex couples. The reforms amended 85 Commonwealth laws to eliminate discrimination against same-sex couples and their children. For instance, the reforms ensured that same-sex couples were treated the same as opposite-sex partners for social security or family assistance purposes. The reforms did not go as far as equalising access to marriage.
Following these changes, opponents of marriage equality suggested that same-sex couples already had all of the same benefits as married couples and, therefore, there was no need to enact marriage equality.
The door that was firmly shut on marriage equality in 2004 was cracked open again in 2009, when the Rudd Government introduced reforms designed to equalise treatment for same-sex couples. The reforms amended 85 Commonwealth laws to eliminate discrimination against same-sex couples and their children. For instance, the reforms ensured that same-sex couples were treated the same as opposite-sex partners for social security or family assistance purposes. The reforms did not go as far as equalising access to marriage.
Following these changes, opponents of marriage equality suggested that same-sex couples already had all of the same benefits as married couples and, therefore, there was no need to enact marriage equality.
The door that was firmly shut on marriage equality in 2004 was cracked open again in 2009, when the Rudd Government introduced reforms designed to equalise treatment for same-sex couples. The reforms amended 85 Commonwealth laws to eliminate discrimination against same-sex couples and their children. For instance, the reforms ensured that same-sex couples were treated the same as opposite-sex partners for social security or family assistance purposes. The reforms did not go as far as equalising access to marriage.
Following these changes, opponents of marriage equality suggested that same-sex couples already had all of the same benefits as married couples and, therefore, there was no need to enact marriage equality.
Proponents of marriage equality disagreed and pointed out the myriad ways in which married couples had more straightforward access to privileges than same-sex couples. Same-sex couples were able to assert most of the same rights as married couples after the Rudd reforms, but they often had to invest considerable effort to achieve the same result. For instance, when a married couple used IVF, both spouses were automatically assigned the status of legal parents, while a de facto couple – the only option available to same-sex couples – would need to prove their relationship to establish parentage.
The final equalisation would not occur until 2017, with the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The passage of the law followed a voluntary postal survey of all Australians, in which 61.6% of respondents supported legalisation of same-sex marriage. This changed the fundamental nature and definition of marriage, so that it became the union of one person with another person.
What percentage of Australian marriages end in divorce?
The Australian Institute of Family Studies reports that following the Family Law Act 1975, in 1980 the crude divorce rate rose to 2.7 divorces each year per 1,000 Australians. The rate of divorce has settled at around 2.0 per 1,000 Australians in recent decades.
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