I was reading the annotated Sherlock Holmes today and came upon a discussion of people marrying into British peerage and what titles they can and cannot assume. This got me wondering about about how these kinds of rules apply in the era of same-sex civil partnerships.
So if, say a British earl or baron or whatnot were to marry a man (or a female member of the nobility a woman), would the non-noble party receive the same corresponding title as if in a heterosexual marriage? (Adjusted for being the same gender, of course.) Or is the conferring of titles somehow tied up with a Church of England-approved marriage and thus not allowed? (Please fight my ignorance in this matter–I’m not British and haven’t set foot in an Anglican church for a long time, so I’m not entirely sure what their stance on same-sex marriage is these days–last I checked, they were still fighting it out and threatening a schism.)
And whether the conferring of titles to same-sex spouses works or not, has anyone encountered this situation yet?
Okay, please discount my American colloquial slip-of-the-keyboard in the title. :smack: And I thought I’d made it all the way through using ‘civil partnership’ every time.
My screw-up aside, is the core of the answer to my question still “no” because of the difference between a church marriage and a civil partnership?
Yes, leaving out the word ‘church.’ It doesn’t matter at all where the straight wedding or the gay civil partnership was conducted - what matters is that civil partnerships are not marriages.
It confers loads of benefits in the areas of tax, inheritance, next-of-kin status, etc. That’s why people form civil partnerships. It does not confer any title. Name change is optional (as with marriage, and with wholly unregistered partnerships).
Sir Elton John’s partner, David Furnish is still “Mr David Furnish”. If Sir Elton was married to a woman his wife would be “Lady John”. I don’t know if any members of the peerage have entered into a civil partnership yet, but my WAG would be that their partnet wouldn’t automatically get any kind of courtesy title or precedence. AFAIK the Queen hasn’t issued any directive on this yet.
Actually, to be more precise, only legally married female partners of male holders of titles can take on equivalent titles themselves. Male partners of Dames, for example, do not get the right to call themselves Dame.
That means that, even if we ever got proper gay marriage here, the same-sex partner wouldn’t be able to take on a new title.
It’s possible that the law would be changed to allow such sharing of titles for male partners in straight marriages too, but not very likely because not that many people care about it. It certainly wouldn’t be an automatic consequence of gay marriage.
You’re assuming that there are two necessary conditions for the acquisition of a title by marriage; first, the male spouse must be titled himself and, secondly, the previously untitled spouse must be female.
But as matters currently stand the second condition is simply a corollary of the first. The current practice can be fully explained by stating one condition only; only a titled male confers a title on his spouse by marriage. If we state the current practice that way, there is no barrier to a titled man conferring a title in a same-sex marriage, if such ever becomes possible.
If and when same-sex marriage is introduced, the issue will have to be decided explicitly, either in the legislation or by an exercise of the royal prerogative. Most likely the rule is likely to be that no, a same-sex marriage does not confer a title. In the British peerage system there is only ever one Duke of Blackacre, and they won’t want to change that. And I can’t see that anybody would think it a good idea if the Duke’s same-sex spouse were to be known as the Duchess of Blackacre. Plus, there is something of a precedent; when parent-child relationships were extended by the adoption legislation, it was decided that titles would not pass to adopted children. I expect they will take the same approach if spousal relationships are ever extended by legislation.
That’s correct. A civil partnership is not a marriage, and titles promulgate through marriage and childbirth only. It’ll speciifically require another Act of Paliament to change that*, and I suspect we’re a good many years away from that but that it will happen eventually.
*In one of two ways - either allowing gay couples to actually marry rather than have civil partnerships; or by enabling the title to be bestowed via civil partnership as well as marriage.
Given that marriage is currently restricted to opposite-sex couples, if your first statement is true (and it is) then your second statement is true but trite; it tells us nothing new. It is simply a corollary of the first. You can omit it, and what you have left is still a complete statement of established practice in this regard. All cases in which a title has not passed on marriage are fully accounted for by pointing to your first statement alone. So it’s not really meaningful or accurate to treat your second statement as a second, independent condition for the acquisition of a title by marriage.
It’s like defining a square as “an equilateral quadrilateral with two right angles”. If it’s an equilateral quadrilateral and it has one right angle, then the other three angles will also be right angles, so observing that it has a second right angle (and a third, and a fourth) doesn’t tell us anything additional about the square.
Civil unions would also seem to cause problems with inheritance of titles. If two males were in a civil union, and the non-titled male impregnated the surrogate instead of the titled male, would the resulting child, if male (if male is required), be considered the titled male’s legal issue and heir, or would the child be considered to be under the adoption clause? The same could be asked of a female union, if the title in question could be passed through the female line. Would a child birthed from the partner’s body and genetics be considered a legitimate heir? How about a child birthed from the partner’s body, but the titled individual’s eggs/genetics? I would assume that a child born of the titled person’s genetics (and body, if appropriate) would be a natural heir, but I could be wrong.
I’m fairly sure that adoption counts, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Assuming it does, that takes care of it since the titled individual would adopt the child.
In the UK, a child born to a surrogate mother is treated in the first instance as the child of the woman who carried it, regardless of the source of the genetic material involved. However this can be set aside either by an adoption order or by a “parental order” under s. 30 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. A parental order can be made only in favour of a married couple, one or both of whom has contributed genetic material.
As far as I can see, a parental order is intended to act pretty much like an adoption order, and so would not result in any title passing to the child, even though it would be the genetic child of one or both of the couple in whose favour the parental order was made.
If same-sex marriage is ever legalised, s. 30 will need to be amended it if is to be available to a same-sex couple who participate in a surrogacy arrangement. (Currently the section assumes that every marriage will involve a “husband” and a “wife”, and makes slightly different provision for husbands and wives, so it would be inoperable if applied to a same-sex couple.) Its unlikely, though, that it would be amended so as to allow a titled spouse transmit their title to the child, given that a titled spouse in an opposite-sex marriage cannot currently transmit a title through the use of a parental order.
On preview: Just to clarify, British titles do not pass to adopted children (or to non-marital children).
From your answer, I take away that surrogate mothers, since they aren’t married to the title bearer, regardless of genetics, carry illegitimate children that can later be made an official part of the family, via adoption or parental order, and that either option doesn’t confer the ability to pass the title. I hope I got that right, and thank you, UDS.
