Abstract
The negative and restrictive attitude of the Swedish legislator towards child marriages celebrated abroad has been step-by step sharpened, most recently by an amendment reacting to the dramatic increase of asylum seekers in the second half of 2015 from countries where persons under the age of eighteen can enter into valid marriages. Such marriages, concluded on or after 1 January 2019, will with almost no exceptions be denied recognition in Sweden, regardless of whether at the time of the wedding the spouses had any connection with Sweden and irrespective of how much time has lapsed thereafter. While the Swedish politicians and public generally welcome this reform, they seem to disregard the serious negative practical and legal consequences such general non-recognition may have for the persons concerned, in particular the young wives. The article examines critically the new rules and discusses the possibilities to reconcile the refusal to accept child marriages with the protection of legitimate interests of the spouses.
Highlights
The negative and restrictive attitude of the Swedish legislator towards child marriages celebrated abroad has been step-by step sharpened, most recently by an amendment reacting to the dramatic increase of asylum seekers in the second half of 2015 from countries where persons under the age of eighteen can enter into valid marriages
It is noteworthy that the new legislation goes farther than the original proposal submitted in December 2017 by the inquiry committee appointed by the Swedish Government in March 2017 to investigate whether there was a need for measures ensuring stronger protection against child marriages
Swedish courts and other authorities had occasionally to deal with foreign child marriages even before that, but the events of 2015 shifted the focus of the problem from child marriages concluded abroad by Swedish residents and/or citizens to foreign couples who entered into a child marriage before their arrival in Sweden
Summary
Just like in most other countries, the fundamental principle of Swedish private international law has been for many decades and still is that a marriage solemnised abroad in accordance with foreign law is valid in Sweden if it is valid in the country where it was concluded. In spite of the minimum age limit of eighteen years imposed by Swedish substantive family law, a child marriage validly concluded abroad was in principle automatically valid in Sweden, subject only to the general exception of public policy (ordre public) which was assumed to impose the minimum age of fifteen years.9 The idea behind these liberal rules was that foreign marriages should be recognised as far as possible in order to avoid the undesirable phenomenon of “limping marriages”, valid in some countries while not recognised in others. In particular within some immigrant groups, that girls under the age of eighteen, some of them Swedish citizens and habitual residents since birth, were taken abroad where they concluded an arranged marriage, which was without any formalities valid in Sweden as well
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