Studies Of The Legislation Of Common Law Marriage In China

This paper is mainly about the issue of legislation of common law marriage in China. Common law marriage which has been existing for a long time in China belongs to non-marital cohabitation. The situation is mainly caused by the traditional custom of marriage, the shortage of the registered marriage system now practiced in China and the weak sense of law. The legislation of common law marriage in China has experienced four steps (The first step is recognition. The second step is limited recognition. The third step is un-recognition. And the last step is recognition in some way).Through those four steps we can see that the development of legislation of common law marriage lacked continuity. Marriage Law has been avoiding talking about the legal effect of common law marriage. And the Chinese government attitude on the legislation of common law marriage has always been inconsistent, which has caused lots of social issues. On the contrary way, more and more counties are beginning to set rules on common law marriages to protect the rights of and to set responsibility on the either side in the cohabitation, though laws of different countries have different legal rules on marriage. This shows that common law marriage should be faced in according to the history of common law marriage, the state now of common law marriage in China or how common law marriage being solved in other country.So the present writer thinks that the legislation of common law marriage should not be ignored considering China's social reality, the history and the actual state of common law marriage, and other countries experiences on the legislation of common law marriage. Active attitude should be token on the legislation of common law marriage of China to relatively legalize it. And efficient activities should be token to protect the common law marriage.This paper stands on the actual state of China and stars from the existing legislation to define common law marriage. This paper also analyses the actual state and the reason of common law marriage. This paper takes historical and comparison method to enrich the observation view, to make points on the shortage of existing legislation. With the combination of other countries examples on the legislation of common law marriage, this paper states the necessity of improved legal on common law marriage. This paper states that common law marriage should be recognized based on the registered marriage. And at last this paper makes suggestion on the improvement of the legislation of common law marriage according to other countries experiences. This paper is divided into four part:The first part is about the theoretical basis of common law marriage. It mainly concerned on legal concepts of common law marriage, the comparison between common law marriage and cohabitation, the state of common law marriage now and the reason of why common law marriage exists.The second part is about how other counties and Macao dial with common law marriage.The third part is about how common law marriage has been dialed with in China. The rules about common law marriage in current Marriage Law are commented in this part.And at last the shortage of those rules is highlighted. Concrete ideas of how to perfect the legislation of common law marriage are raised in according to the legislation in other countries.