The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by H.A.H. and declared that his 1975 marriage to S.A.A. was valid under Irish law from the date it began. The judgment said a foreign marriage that is monogamous in practice can be recognised even if the law under which it was celebrated permits a husband to marry more than once.
The case concerned two marriages contracted in Lebanon, where the judgment said Lebanese law and Shari’ah permitted a Muslim man to marry up to four women. The first marriage took place in 1975 and the second in 1988. Both ceremonies were valid under Lebanese law, and the spouses were domiciled there at the time.
The first wife sought recognition after the Minister refused her admission to Ireland under the family reunification provisions of the Refugee Act 1996. The husband had come to Ireland in 1998, was recognised as a refugee in 2000 and became an Irish citizen in 2002. The second wife had been admitted in 2001 as his spouse and later became an Irish citizen. The first wife arrived in Ireland as an asylum seeker in 2006 and was later granted permission to remain. The judgment said the dispute over her status was not moot.
The High Court refused the declaration in 2010, finding that recognising the marriage would not fit the constitutional understanding of marriage. The Supreme Court rejected that approach on appeal. It said Irish law can recognise a foreign marriage that is valid under the law where it took place unless recognition would conflict with Irish public policy. In the Court’s view, a marriage that is in fact monogamous does not threaten the constitutional model of marriage merely because the foreign legal system permits further marriages.
The Court also said recognition of the first marriage should not be withdrawn because the husband later married someone else. It expressed the view that a second or later marriage entered into while the first marriage remains in being cannot be recognised as valid under Irish law, because that would conflict with constitutional principles of equality and mutual commitment.
The judgment was delivered by Ms Justice O’Malley on 15 June 2017. It notes that its conclusions remain subject to the Oireachtas’s power to legislate on public policy, within constitutional limits. It also stresses that non-recognition of a later marriage does not necessarily mean it can have no legal consequences in any context.