I saw this on the news a while back. This is a true incedent that happened in Spain.
A man and woman met each other and fell in love. Thet got married and had 2 or 3 kids (if memory serves they were normal). Somehow it came out through the papershuffling beaurocracy or something that they were Brother and Sister (imagine finding that out!) The government was going to annul the marriage, but after some more beaurocracy (sp?) they stepped back and let it be.
Question is, what would happen if this happened in the States or Canada? I know that Europe is more open to same family marriages, like first cousins for example. More so than most states, so do you think the goverment on this side of the pond could have forced them to divorce?
I saw a story about this same thing happening in the U.S. I can’t remember if the couple was actually married, or just engaged when they found out. I do remember that they were planning on going to some other country to try to get a legal marriage, which I suppose would be accepted in the U.S.
I’m not sure what the law is, but common sense tells me that unless there was some sort of complaint, the government wouldn’t get involved. I mean, who would begin the annulment proceedings? Some bureaucrat? Doesn’t sound likely. They’d probably just let it stand once the marriage was in the books.
I don’t remember where the heck I saw this, but years ago it used to be a wedding prank for someone to send the couple to be some phony legal papers indicating that they were related. I’m not exactly sure how the joke went, but to me it doesn’t sound as funny as painting “HELP ME” on the bottom of the grooms shoes.
I think they are probably a few zealots in the governemnt that if they caught wind of something like this, they would like to see something that “sinful” go down the tubes.
Well, I’m not a lawyer, but I am European
I can’t really place this statement of yours. Speaking for my own country (the Netherlands), it is in theory possible to marry your first cousin, but only after obtaining written permission by the Crown (read: Queen Beatrix, or one of her little elves, no doubt). This high barrier, combined with the fact that marrying your first cousin is considered highly unethical by, say, 99% of the population, means that it actually almost never happens in practice.
Hmmm. Seems to me that in most countries it was “legal” to marry your first cousin, not saying that you would want to (unless you live in Shelbyville ) They spoke about that a little bit during the program that mentioned this in the first place. I will see if I can dig up some more info on that, as I am curious myself now.
I think the worry is that if the parents are closely related then the children have a higher than normal chance of having geneticaly-based diseases, or disorders, or syndromes, or whatever they are called. If they already had kids, and weren’t going to have anymore, then I think the government could relax a bit.
In the U.S., because marriage involves sex, (which is clearly evil) the public would freak out even if the couple said they weren’t going to have children.
We had a related thread a while back: http:Marrying a First Cousin, in which we learned that many states in the U.S. do allow first-cousin marriages. Most or all states outlaw marriages between full or half-siblings.
Marrying a first cousin and having children together is not particularly dangerous. For example, birth weight of children born between cousins is only 1% less than between unrelated parents, and length of gestation is exactly the same. I remember seeing a list of famous people whose parents were cousins. IIRC, Charles de Gaulle was on the list.
I wonder if the OP refers to full siblings or half-siblings. The half-sibling relationship is just as close as the uncle-niece relationship. I believe it is not unusual in parts of India for uncles to marry nieces, as disgusting as that sounds to us. According to someone in the other thread, Einstein’s second wife Elsa was his double first cousin (first cousin on both sides of the family). I couldn’t confirm that fact, but I know they were at least first cousins. The double-first-cousin relationship is also just as close as the half-sibling relationship. (I don’t think Albert and Elsa had any children together).
“In recent years, Spain appears to have the highest frequency of consanguinity in Europe… All marriages of second cousins or closer require special dispensation of the bishop.”–Textbook of Human Generics by Max Levitan. About 2.5% of marriages are between first cousins, and another 2.5% are between second cousins.
Well, yes, I saw that. I assume the correct title is Genetics and not Generics. Besides that, I’d like to know where he gets the number. Just because he prints it in a book does not mean it is true.
I am not saying it is impossible but first cousins in Spain need special dispensation to marry, like elsewhere and I just do not believe that high percentage. It seems very high to me. What is the percentage in other places / countries?
I would think marrying cousins would be more common in very small towns and villages (hence the jokes about W Virginia, etc) and more uncommon in large, urban populations. Taking into account Spain is a very urbanized country I just find it very hard to believe that number.
I did a web search but could not find any relevant info. Only consanguinity in the bear population in northern Spain (it seems there are so few left, they don’t have much option than to marry their cousins) and some other animal breeding info.
As to who would want to annul the marriage, I imagine that many third parties could have an interest in annulment. If a spouse died, and the survivors started fighting over the estate, it might be to someone’s advantage to show that the marriage never existed. The same might be true if the couple was sued, one “spouse” was required to testify against the other, or if they declared bankruptcy or had tax collection issues. Marriage carries certain legal and financial protections, and litigants might find some advantage in removing those protections.
Well, I did some snooping and didn’t come up with any real facts. The only consensus I could get was that with the sites I checked said “First cousin marriages are much more common in Europe than the US”. They didn’t show any data to support that conclusion though. I should also mention that these sites tended to be more skewed towards the “Its fine to marry your first cousin, why shouldn’t it be?” crowd. So I take that in mind.
Not even these sites mentioned much about marrying your sister though.
My own personal feeling about this though (after doing some reading on this) is no matter how I feel about the “ickyness” factor, if you get as far as say, second cousin, there really doesn’t seem to be much of a “genetic” risk with offspring, at least not much more than with anyone else. And that is my expert “non-genetic-prof-type-person” opinion
I would think marrying one’s first cousin should be seen as more elitist…after all, that’s what the royals did. Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Albert. And two sets of her grandchildren married each other:
The Hessian Grandchildren, her daughter Alice’s daughter Irene married her cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, whose mother was the Princess Royal, Vicky.
Irene’s brother Ernie married their first cousin Victoria Melita of Edinburgh(Ducky)-Victoria’s father was Prince Alfred of England. (although this marriage ended in divorce, partly due to Ernie’s bisexuality, and partly due to the fact that “Ducky” was a real bitch, and wanted to marry her first cousin on her mother’s side, Grand Duke Kyril of Russia-which was against the Russian Orthodox Church.)
Didn’t a long line of Egyptian pharaohs marry exclusively brother-sister to maintain their divine purity? Nobody could tell all those Ptolemys and Cleopatras apart, and maybe they were all pretty much the same anyway.
