Legislation re who you are not allowed not to marry

bobbyss

Just saw a case in England where a Pakistani girl is being ostracized by her family because she does not want to marry her cousin.

Is there any legislation in Ireland which forbids cousins marrying each other?

OldMrBrennan83

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Indricotherium

when you apply for the marriage license there is a form that details the people you are not allowed marry.

it has a list parent grandparent sibling etc. I don't think cousin is on it.

Phoebas

Cousins are ok.

There is no legal restriction on the marriage of first cousins.
Consanguinity – blood relationships
You may not marry your:

• Grandmother or grandfather
• Mother or father
• Father’s sister (aunt) or brother (uncle)
• Mother’s sister (aunt) or brother (uncle)
• Sister or brother
• Father’s daughter (half sister) or son (half brother)
• Mother’s daughter (half sister) or son (half brother)
• Daughter or son
• Son’s daughter (granddaughter) or son (grandson)
• Daughter’s daughter (granddaughter) or son (grandson)
• Brother’s daughter (niece) or son (nephew)
• Sister’s daughter (niece) or son (nephew)

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/getting_married/legal_prerequisites_for_marriage.html

January

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/getting_married/legal_prerequisites_for_marriage.html

Further information lays out who you can't marry. It specifies that it's not illegal for first cousins to marry

NTC

Just before the list of who you can't marry is the quote "There is no legal restriction on the marriage of first cousins."

Here is the link to the page:
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/getting_married/legal_prerequisites_for_marriage.html

bobbyss

All those listed are very closely related and that presumably explains the prohibition. but a first cousin, for example, is kind of a close relation also I would have thought.

There is a debate about the offsprings' health risk and that was the reason why the Pakistani girl refused the arranged marriage.

Victor

^^^^^^^^ Snap^2

In some cultures, you can marry a cousin, but only if they have a different surname. This way, the daughters of the relationship will have two different X chromosomes.

bobbyss

Is there any evidence at all that marrying cousins leads to health issues?

Victor

bobbyss wrote: »

Is there any evidence at all that marrying cousins leads to health issues?

Yes. The closer the relationship between parents, the greater the risk of a situation where a chromosomal defect will present itself. The more times there is inbreeding, the greater the risk. Take a look at the Bradford example here: http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/featkiss

Fred Swanson

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Indricotherium

Fred Swanson wrote: »

What about step relations?

It seems as though once your genetic relationship falls below 50% anything goes.

Indricotherium

Fred Swanson wrote: »

What about step relations?

What about great grandparents or great grandchildren!?!?

Victor

Indricotherium wrote: »

great grandchildren!?!?

You won't be able to get it up and they'll be too young.

gctest50

bobbyss wrote: »

Is there any evidence at all that marrying cousins leads to health issues?

Ireland

There were consistently higher inbreeding levels in the towns which exhibited high rates of subnormality


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0191886983901149

coylemj

Marriage involving royalty up to the beginning of the 20th century often involved first cousins marrying one another e.g. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - her mother and his father were brother and sister.

Peregrinus

An isolated incidence of first-cousin marriage really doesn't present a huge genetic risk.

But when such marriages accumulate, the risks start to grow - so when first cousins marry, and one or both of them has first-cousing marriages a generation or two back in the family tree.

There isn't a sharp distinction between "no risk" and "unacceptable risk". Basically, the more genetic material spouses share, the higher the risk, but the risk falls off fairly sharply once you start moving away from sibling marriage and parent child-marriage.

The present Queen of England is married to her third cousin, Prince Philip. They are both great-great-grandchilden of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who themselves were first cousins. The Queen's grandfather, George V, married his third cousin, Mary of Teck. And so forth. Cousin marriages are fairly common in that family, and so far there have been no consequences worse than an above-average incidence of sticking-out ears.

barrier86

So that vote wasn't for marriage equalitally after All?

Peregrinus

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Your step-brother or sister is not related to you (in law) and you are free to marry them. Genetically this makes perfect sense, although socially it could be a bit destabilising, and if you have been step-children from infancy/early childhood, and both grew up in the same nuclear family, I think most people would be squicked out by such a marriage. But it's not illegal.

A half-brother or sister is, in law, a brother or sister; you can't marry them.

There's an academic argument about whether you can marry your adoptive sibling. The Adoptions Acts say that the effect of an adoption order is the adopted child is considered "with regard to the rights and duties of parents and children in relation to each other" as the child of the adoptive parents, but it doesn't say anything about wider relationships than the parent-child relationship. So there's an argument that the law against sibling marriage would not apply to siblings by adoption. The argument has never been tested since adoptive siblings have never sought to marry. Again, while there isn't a genetic objection I think there would be other psychosocial objections raised.

Victor

barrier86 wrote: »

So that vote wasn't for marriage equalitally after All?

There was never a ban on a man marrying his brother / male cousin.

Mrs OBumble

Victor wrote: »

Yes. The closer the relationship between parents, the greater the risk of a situation where a chromosomal defect will present itself. The more times there is inbreeding, the greater the risk. Take a look at the Bradford example here: http://discovermagazine.com/2003/aug/featkiss

Did you actually read that article?

The main conclusion is
"No scientist is advocating intermarriage, but the evidence indicates that we should at least moderate our automatic disdain for it. "

Yes when it goes wrong it goes very wrong. But there can be benefits too.

Victor

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Did you actually read that article?

Hell, no. Only parts of it that suited me.

judeboy101

Victor wrote: »

You won't be able to get it up and they'll be too young.

17 yr old has kid who has a kid at 17 who has a kid at 17. You could leaglly marry that great grand kid at 68

4ensic15

The RC church in Ireland required a papal dispensation for first cousins to marry. there was a further dispensation for 2nd cousins to marry. marriage out to 3rd cousin was frowned upon. The statistical risk of abnormality is 6% higher for 1st cousins and 3% higher for 2nd cousins and nil for relations beyond 3rd cousin once removed.

Peregrinus

judeboy101 wrote: »

17 yr old has kid who has a kid at 17 who has a kid at 17. You could leaglly marry that great grand kid at 68

No, you couldn't.

The table that Phoebas links to, that is set out on the citizen's information website, is non-statutory. Surprisingly, the prohibited degrees of consanguinity are not set out in statute anywhere; they're established by common law, and they are the prohibted degrees which used to be applied by the Catholic church/the Church of Ireland back in the day when we had an established church.

The table is a useful list of marriages that would be forbidden by the rules, but it only lists the marriages that people thought were likely or plausible when the table was compiled. It dates, believe it or not, from about 1560, and back then nobody thought it likely that a great-grandparent/great-grandchild marriage would ever be suggested; hence it wasn't included in the table.

It seems they were right, because in the 457 years which have passed since then nobody every has proposed to enter into a great-grandparent/great-grandchild marriage; if they had, the table would have been updated. Church law in 1560 (and, FWIW, today) has never allowed anyone to marry their own lineal descendant, however remote. Civil law inherited the church rules on this and, while the legislature can change the rules at any time, it has never changed this rule. Nor, I suggest, is it likely to.

coylemj

Some non-blood relations that were prohibited from getting married were that a man could not marry his deceased brother's widow and a woman was not allowed to marry her deceased sister's husband. Those prohibitions were removed by separate pieces of legislation only in the 20th century.

It was the first of those prohibitions that Henry VIII attempted to use to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared null and void so he could be free to marry Anne Boleyn. Catherine had previously been married as a child bride to Henry's older brother, Arthur Prince of Wales.

ohnonotgmail

coylemj wrote: »

Some non-blood relations that were prohibited from getting married were that a man could not marry his deceased brother's widow and a woman was not allowed to marry her deceased sister's husband. Those prohibitions were removed by separate pieces of legislation only in the 20th century.

It was the first of those prohibitions that Henry VIII attempted to use to have his marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared null and void so he could be free to marry Anne Boleyn. Catherine had previously been married as a child bride to Henry's older brother, Arthur Prince of Wales.

In fairness, after how well that turned out i would be surprised if there was much demand for it.