Wedding in Brazil v wedding I'm Ireland

sallyanne12

Ok first things first- I am completely clueless about this so explaining to me like a dummie would be good.
My sister is going out with a Brazilian man and she wants to marry him. They got engaged a while back. Her fiancé proposed to her and while all the family love him, I am a bit concerned about his intentions. I genuinely don't think he wants to marry her and is choosing Brazil for their wedding. If they get married in Brazil, is it the same as here as in they get married in a church and it's all legal etc? she wants a normal church wedding but wants it legally recognised at the same time. How do Brazilians marry? I read that their church weddings are not even legal so I'm confused how a typical Brazilian wedding is. And if they get married in Brazil and don't register the marriage in Ireland, how would the government recognise it? I mean I don't understand foreign marriages. Surely people can get married in many different countries...

skallywag

Well I'm assuming that it's pretty much the same as in practically every other country, in that there is a legal aspect and an optional religious aspect.

E.g. if you live in, say, Germany, then you go to the 'Town Hall' to be legally married, while you can then also have a ceremony in a Church if you so wish. The Church part alone is meaningless in the eyes of the law though.

Similarly in Ireland there you have two distinct aspects, though it can be pretty normal in Ireland for the legal aspect (i.e. the signing of the forms, etc.) to be carried out immediately after the religious ceremony has finished, so one could easily be lead to believe that it's all more or less the one.

I cannot imagine how it would be different in Brazil, i.e. even if one wishes to get married in a Church, the marriage itself would not be legally binding unless the relevant papers are signed / witnessed , etc, at some stage.

Gatica

If the marriage is legal in Brazil then it would be legally binding in Ireland too. It's obviously up to the parties in question to be honest about it outside of Brazil, as who would know otherwise.

Scarinae

There's some more information about Irish citizens getting married abroad here, which you might find useful, as well as details for the Irish embassy in Brazil and the application process on the DFA website here. On the Brazil side, there's info here that is aimed at UK citizens but most of it is probably still applicable to Irish citizens too.

I'm not sure why you think this man doesn't want to marry your sister - are you worried that he's after an Irish visa? Or do you think for some reason that he deliberately wants to have a wedding in Brazil that won't be legally recognised in Ireland? It's not very clear from your post what your concern is but I hope that some of the above linked information is helpful to you.

Peregrinus

skallywag wrote: »

Well I'm assuming that it's pretty much the same as in practically every other country, in that there is a legal aspect and an optional religious aspect.

E.g. if you live in, say, Germany, then you go to the 'Town Hall' to be legally married, while you can then also have a ceremony in a Church if you so wish. The Church part alone is meaningless in the eyes of the law though . . .

This isn't the case in "practically every other country"; it's a common model found in quite a few countries, but there are plenty of other models to be found as well around the world.

As it happens, though, this is the model used in Brazil. To marry legally in Brazil, you (a) register your intent to marry at the Civil Registry Office and get a marriage licence, (b) within 90 days of getting your licence, actually marry, which you do at the Civil Registry Office (in a procedure called "registering" a marriage) and (c) have a religious ceremony, if you want one.

It's not true that the church part is "meaningless" as a matter of civil law. It's not enough to create a valid marriage, but it does have legal significance. Specifically, the church is not supposed to have a marriage service for you unless you are, in fact, civilly married, either in Brazil or in some other country. This means that the church service always comes after the civil ceremony, not before. It also means that it's unlikely that someone could be "fooled"
into a church-only wedding with no legal standing; the church itself would normally refuse to celebrate the wedding unless documentation is produced showing that the couple have complied with the civil requirements.

Marriage is regulated in Brazil by provincial as well as federal law so, depending on where exactly the couple marries, there may be additional requirements that have to be complied with.

skallywag

Peregrinus wrote: »

..Specifically, the church is not supposed to have a marriage service for you unless you are, in fact, civilly married, either in Brazil or in some other country. This means that the church service always comes after the civil ceremony, not before...

Is it not the case in Ireland that the couple sign the legal documents relating to the marriage after the church ceremony is completed?

Peregrinus

skallywag wrote: »

Is it not the case in Ireland that the couple sign the legal documents relating to the marriage after the church ceremony is completed?

Yes, it is. But . . .

(a) I'm discussing the situation in Brazil, not Ireland. In Brazil the civil stuff must come first.

(b) In Ireland, what you sign after the church ceremony is not what makes you a married couple under civil law. What makes you a married couple under civil law is the exchange of vows before the celebrant. The paperwork you sign afterwards doesn't create your marriage under civil law; it registers your marriage, in the same way that a birth certificate registers a birth and a death certificate registers a death.

What happens if you fail to register? You have committed an offence, and you may be fined. But you are nevertheless still born, married, dead. All kinds of practical difficulties may flow from your failure to register a birth, marriage, death, but the underlying fact, the thing that you were supposed to register, has still happened.

skallywag

So, using the Irish situation, just for the sake of argument, if the couple go through with the exchange of vows before the celebrant, but then do not sign the paperwork afterwards, they would still in fact be married under civil law?

That's very interesting.

Peregrinus wrote: »

...It's not true that the church part is "meaningless" as a matter of civil law...

I believe that in the particular case that I was making reference to, i.e. Germany, this is indeed the case.