How did Irish people remarry before 1997?

Until 1997, the Republic of Ireland had a constitutional prohibition on the granting of divorces. Before 1997, what options were available to spouses who wanted a legal form of disunion that would allow them to remarry? For example, was it relatively easy for couples to obtain an annulment from the Irish government? Or were there perhaps any nearby countries that granted divorces without a long residence period? (The wording of the constitution speaks only about the “grant” of divorce; presumably the government recognized divorces legally obtained abroad.)

I am assuming that simply murdering one’s spouse was not a particularly popular option, though if the spousal homicide rates were indeed higher than in other European countries where divorce was legal, I’d be interested to hear about it.

The movie “Divorce Italian Style” comes to mind.

IIRC the Irish government only recognized foreign divorces if one of the parties actually became a bona fide resident or citizen of the country where the divorce was granted. So a quick (& expensive) trip to a divorce mill like Guam or the Dominican Republic was out of the question.

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http://irishbarrister.com/nullity.html

Those are not very large numbers.

I should ask my Irish friend about this. Her father (who was a member of the Irish Parliament for a time) was married three times, and, AFAIK, divorced twice. One divorce would have been in the late 1950s or early 1960s (as my friend was born in 1965, and her mother was her father’s second wife), and the other divorce would have been in the 1970s. While I know the timing of these, I have no idea of what the circumstances were.

What about getting the marriage annulled by the Catholic Church itself (“Declaration of Nullity”)? That is what some people did in Spain prior to 1981.

Of course, it is not that the Church decides that the marriage is dissolved (marriage is a sacrament in the eyes of the Church, and is indisoluble)… It is a legal finding that the marriage was not valid to begin with, so it never took place from a legal point of view.

I imagine that if you were influential and/or rich enough, it would be easier for you to get the Catholic Church to declare that your marriage was “null and void”.

They “lived apart”, and they could not remarry unless one of them emigrated and divorced in the new country. Even then, if the remaining spouse wanted to remarry s/he needed a church annulment or would be excommunicated for remarrying.

So you really only got one shot at marriage as long as your existing spouse was alive. Which resulted in a lot of very abusive relationships continuing.

But then, Anna Duggar is back with Josh, so it’s not just Ireland, it’s not just back then, and it’s not only the Catholics who are and have been this messed up. There are many cultures, states and religions where even today spouses are required to remain in abusive marriages, forget mere unhappiness.

As alphaboi1867 says, if either of the couple was domiciled in a foreign jurisdiction (in a way recognised by Irish law) then the Irish legal system would recognise a divorce granted in that jurisdiction. But as a matter of Irish law it is very difficult to acquire a foreign domicile; basically, you need to be permanently settled in the other country.

Nullity decrees could be obtained, but on very limited grounds. Only a small minority of separated couples were well-positioned to obtain nullity decrees. As PastTense says, over time the courts broadened somewhat the grounds on which they could be given, but they never accounted for more than a tiny proportion of separated couples.

(For Catholics, church annulments were more easily obtained (relative to civil nullity) and, contrary to JoseB ‘s imaginings, obtaining a church annulment wasn’t a matter of being rich or influential. But they had no civil legal effect.)

There was an extensive separation jurisdiction; courts could make separation order plus a wide array of ancillary orders dealing with property, maintenance, guardianship and custody of children, inheritance rights, the lot. Basically, you could get all the reliefs that would be available with a divorce, except the capacity to remarry.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to travel to England, cross their fingers while ticking the box on the court form that said “yes, I’m resident in England and Wales”, obtain a divorce in England and in due course celebrate a second marriage in England. The validity of the second marriage as a matter of Irish law would be unlikely to survive a challenge, if a challenge were raised, but often it was in nobody’s interests to raise a challenge.

Wouldn’t it be easier to do this in Northern Ireland, particularly for those who already lived near the border? Or was divorce law in Northern Ireland similarly inconvenient at the time?

Possibly. But NI being so close, and Ireland being the relatively intimate place that it is, the chances of it being known to court officials, etc, that you weren’t resident in NI, or just the chances of the thing being much talked about, and coming to the ears of somebody who knew the facts and was enough of a busybody to want to interfere, were greater.

Go to Manchester or London, and you’ll attract less notice. And if what you’re doing is a little bit dodgy in certain aspects, then you prefer to fly under the radar.

NI divorce law is similar to that of England and Wales, but this isn’t always so; there can be a bit of a lag. For example the English divorce law reforms of 1969 (under which divorce decrees were based on proof of “irretrievable breakdown” rather than proof of adultery, cruelty, desertion, etc) weren’t replicated in NI until 1978. English courts also had (and I think may still have) smoother procedures for getting divorces just by the filing of paperwork in uncontested cases - i.e. no need for the spouses actually to attend a court hearing.

FWIW, getting a foreign divorce is still a thing in Ireland. The 1996 constitutional amendment imposed a four-year separation requirement, so people do still take up “residence” in another country in order to avail of their more liberal divorce laws.

I also recently saw a couple who had to get married in the North because her foreign (non-EU) divorce wasn’t recognised in this part of Ireland.

Presumably they can’t return to the Republic afterwards or else they could be prosecuted for bigamy. Or at the very least, they wouldn’t be able to avail themselves of the normal legal protections extended to married couples. (If Ireland refused to recognize the divorce, I don’t see how it would then recognize the remarriage.)

If you’re interested in life without divorce, Dickens’ Hard Times is set in an era when divorce in the UK required an individual Act of Parliament and hence was unobtainable but for the very wealthy or connected, and it showcases the trap that bad marriages formed.

No, they can return to Ireland with no problems.

There is a bigamy offence in Ireland, but it is not committed by living together, holding yourself out as married, etc. It’s committed by actually going through a ceremony of marriage (while married to someone else). And it’s not an offence for which extraterritorial jurisdiction is asserted, so it can only be committed by going through a ceremony of marriage within the State.

But, yeah, back in Ireland, if the facts are known, they are not entitled to the legal status of a married couple. This may make less difference than you might think, since for many administrative purposes the treatment of cohabiting couples is assimilated to that of married couples, but it does make a difference, and it can be signficant.

I was involved some years ago in a court case in which a man married, separated, obtained an English divorce and married a second time in England (while resident throughout in Ireland, as were both his wives) and then died in Ireland, having assured both of his wives that they would be “looked after” by his employer-sponsored pension plan. I don’t think he was intending to defraud anybody; he just
wanted everybody to be happy and everything to be all right. The court case, which followed his death, was over the division of the benefit payable under the pension plan.

They were recognised for immigration purposes anyway. I assumed they had to be under EU mutual recognition rules, though I never delved into it any further.

EU divorces are recognised in Ireland under EU mutual recognition rules but, obviously, that would be no help to someone who got a divorce in a non-EU country that Irish law wouldn’t recognise, and then remarried on the strength of that.

But, yeah, there is a visa category for people who are in non-marital conjugal relationships, which effectively treats them in the same way as a married couple would be treated. The result is that for migration purposes it makes little or no difference whether you are married in a way that Irish law recognises, married on the strength of a foreign divorce that Irish law doesn’t recognise or wholly unmarried.

Oh this is very wrong. Firstly in this case it wasn’t a visa but a residence permit. There is a separate department within INIS that handles “de facto” residence permits - it’s not the same unit that handles spousal permits - but it was the spousal permit unit that handled this particular application. They are recognised as a married couple for immigration purposes.

Secondly, “de facto” couples are treated quite differently to married couples. They must establish two years of cohabitation; their applications won’t be processed at all if they are here without permission (which would have doomed the wife in my case); they can’t rely on Article 41 to overcome things like minimum income thresholds. INIS also has this test of whether their relationship is actually “marriage like” or merely “boyfriend and girlfriend” like - this seems kind of arbitrary but it will look at things like whether they have joint bank accounts, which again are not required for married couples.

In short, for migration purposes, it makes a huge difference whether you’re recognised as married or not.

Fair enough. I bow to your superior wisdom.

In the context of the question raised in the OP though (“How did people fare before 1997?”) it may be irrelevant. I suspect that for most or all of the period before 1997 neither visas nor residence permits were available on the strength of a non-marital conjugal partnership. So, yeah, difficulty in getting a divorce, leading to inability to marry your current Reason for Living, could have been a huge disadvantage in some circumstances.