Swiss Senate in favour of tightening rules on underage marriage
The Swiss Senate, March 12, 2024.
KEYSTONE
Under proposed new rules, courts would in future be able to declare marriages invalid up to the point at which the underage spouse reaches the age of 25.
Currently such court action is no longer possible once the underage spouse turns 18 and thus reaches the legal age of adulthood.
A second point of the bill is that underage marriages would be automatically deemed invalid if one of the spouses was a resident in Switzerland at the time of the union.
This regulation is aimed at preventing so-called summer holiday marriages – i.e. minors living in Switzerland who marry abroad during their holidays. Marriages entered into abroad in which one partner is under 16 will also not be recognised.
On Tuesday the Senate unanimously approved the corresponding government bill, which consists of amendments to several decrees. The debate will now pass over to the other chamber of parliament, the House of Representatives.
Balance of interests
The current law provides for the possibility of tolerating underage marriages in individual cases. This is to be maintained in future: if a person is still a minor at the time of the judgement, the marriage should be allowed to continue if this is in the overriding interest of the person concerned.
On Tuesday, Social Democrat Senator Daniel Jositsch said that it made sense to maintain this balance of interests. It is conceivable, he said, that a 17-year-old from a country which allows marriage from the age of 16 could marry an adult, come to Switzerland and become pregnant. Such a case would have to be examined specifically.
Forced marriages and marriages with minors have increasingly come to the attention of the general public in recent years. Between 2013 and 2017, Swiss authorities noted a total of some 350 suspected cases of invalid marriages due to coercion or an underage person.
The government presented its draft bill on protecting minors from forced marriage last August.
Adapted from German by DeepL/dos
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