10 - The Legacy of the Past and Lessons for the Future

Summary

Decisions made in the nineteenth century continue to have an impact on how couples marry in the twenty-first. But so much of the current law regulating weddings has come about by chance. Legislators have responded to specific problems and situations by making what might seem to be minor amendments to the legislation but which at best create new anomalies and at worst change the options available to couples entirely. Examining how and why particular provisions were included reveals how many were stop-gap measures that were never intended to be permanent, or were introduced as afterthoughts, without full consideration of their implications, or were intended to serve an entirely different purpose from that which is now attributed to them. The law should reflect how twenty-first-century couples wish to marry, rather than how nineteenth-century lawmakers thought they should.