Is it possible to sign at the age of 16 with parental permission, but without any reason? | Moscow

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Published: 10/16/2016

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The requirement to reach the legal age is one of the main ones for carrying out such a procedure as registering a marriage between two citizens.

In the vast majority of cases, they can get married only after they reach adulthood.

However, if there are compelling reasons and certain legal requirements are met, marriage registration is also allowed between minors , which will be discussed in detail below.

• Legislative regulation
• Conditions Availability of permission from local authorities
• Availability of valid reasons

Age of marriage

According to the law, citizens who have reached the age of 18 can freely create a family ( Article 13 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation ). And this age was not established by chance: the future spouses received a certificate of secondary education and are able to work. Adult citizens have the right to marry without parental consent .

Good reasons allow you to get married at 16 years old ( clause 2 of article 13 of the RF IC ). However, the local administration has the right to further reduce the age of those getting married. For example, in the Moscow region it is allowed to start a family from the age of 14, and in the Murmansk region - from the age of 15.

Age limits apply equally to both men and women. But it should be remembered that communication with minors is criminally punishable. If one of the lovers has reached the age of majority, then law enforcement officers may become interested in the relationship. The conclusion of an official marriage is not a mitigating circumstance in such cases. The situation can be aggravated by relatives: they have the right to demand annulment of the marriage through the court.

Conditions

In the above part 2 of Art. 13 of the RF IC provides the following list of conditions under which marriage between minors is possible:

Availability of permission from local authorities

In particular, such permission can be obtained from the heads of administrations of cities, districts and districts in cities.

Similar documents from other bodies or officials have no legal force.

To obtain permission, minors or their legal representatives (parents, guardians, trustees) must submit a corresponding application to the authorized body, attaching certain documents to it. These documents can be any papers confirming the existence of compelling reasons for marriage. Their specific types depend on the situation.

Each situation is considered individually , after which a separate permit is also issued for a particular applicant. In other words, the local government cannot issue a document allowing or prohibiting the registration of a marriage union for absolutely all persons under 18 years of age.

Availability of valid reasons

The legislation does not contain any list of these reasons that would definitely be considered valid, so in most cases the decision on their significance is made by local governments.

The most popular grounds that are taken into account in practice include:

• bride's pregnancy;
• the birth of a joint child;
• the presence of an immediate threat to the health or life of one of the parties;
• conscription of the groom for compulsory military service;
• an actual marriage (that is, the couple living together and running a household).

This list is far from exhaustive, so parties can obtain permission in many other cases.

The final decision on this is made only by the local government, taking into account all existing conditions and circumstances.

In addition, many constituent entities of the Russian Federation have their own grounds for formalizing relations between minors, formalized in the form of separate legislative acts. Moreover, some of them allow marriage even before the age of 16 (but at least from the age of 14), if there are appropriate serious reasons for this.

Another basis for marriage is the emergence of full legal capacity in a minor, which occurs if he, for example, begins to officially work or engage in entrepreneurial activity.

In this case, he receives all the rights and responsibilities of adults, including marriage. A conclusion on obtaining full legal capacity can be obtained through the court.

As for parents or other legal representatives of minor citizens (guardians, trustees), their consent to marriage is not necessary, but is highly desirable. It is also worth noting that their refusal to provide consent to this can be appealed in court.

If it is impossible to obtain permission from the parents, future spouses need to apply for it to the guardianship and trusteeship authority at the place of their registration. However, it will be given only if the parties are able to prove the weight of the grounds for this.

It is also worth considering that compliance with the general conditions that apply to registration of marriage is mandatory.

These include:

• the voluntariness of the decision of each of the parties - both the groom and the bride must independently want to get married, without any pressure from outsiders;
• the absence of an already registered marriage on one of the parties - since polygamy is prohibited in Russia, all previous unions (if any) must be terminated;
• capacity of persons - neither party should be declared incompetent due to mental illness;
• lack of family ties - in particular, marriage between parents and children, adoptive parents and their wards, brothers and sisters, grandchildren and grandparents is not allowed.

If at least one of these conditions is not met, even an officially registered marriage may be declared invalid.

The procedure for recognizing it as such is no different from situations when relationships are formalized between adult citizens.

Good reasons

The legislation does not establish a strict list of situations when early marriage is possible. The decision on the possibility of marriage is made by local government bodies on the basis of the submitted documents. Therefore, the couple should definitely justify their desire to start a family. For example, provide a medical report.

Valid reasons may include:

• the onset of pregnancy;
• birth of a child;
• long-term cohabitation and housekeeping;
• employment of the couple, independent financial support;
• serious illness of one of the newlyweds.

The list is not final, since the situations arise are very diverse. If the municipality does not consider the arguments weighty enough for marriage, then the decision will have to be appealed in court.

No valid reasons

Theoretically, minors can express a mutual desire to get married if the bride is not pregnant. In this case, an application to reduce the marriageable age is submitted only with the consent of the parents. Further developments depend on the decision of the local administration.

Reasons for underage marriage

Article 13 of the Family Code indicates that in the presence of certain valid reasons (in certain cases), local government bodies (usually district or city administrations) have the right to allow persons who have reached the age of incomplete legal capacity, that is, sixteen years, to marry.

But the legislation does not provide a list of such reasons, so they can be identified based on already established practice:

• pregnancy;
• actual relationship (civil marriage);
• presence of common children;
• threat to life;
• the groom's conscription for military service.

Parental permission is not required for such a marriage.

Legal consequences of early marriage

Starting from the age of 16, a teenager can obtain the status of full legal capacity. In this case, he is considered emancipated and has the right, on an equal basis with adults:

• get officially employed;
• to do business;
• enter into marital relations.

A citizen is recognized as emancipated only by the guardianship and trusteeship authorities with the consent of the parents. If the authorized body refuses to emancipate a teenager, then support can only be obtained in court. After the procedure has been successfully completed, adults (parents, adoptive parents) are not responsible for the further actions of the minor.

Emancipated newlyweds have the right to regulate their relationship by concluding a marriage contract. In the event of a divorce, the former spouses do not lose their legal capacity.

Despite the fact that emancipated citizens are recognized as having full legal capacity, they cannot get married without the consent of local governments. You will need to provide documents confirming valid reasons.

Invalid marriage

If the future newlyweds violated the requirements of the Family Code when getting married, then such a union is declared invalid by the court ( Article 27 of the RF IC ). The initiator of the lawsuit can be one of the spouses or his parents.

Reasons for invalidating a union:

• lack of permission to lower the marriageable age;
• one of the newlyweds is already in a registered marriage;
• the bride and groom are close relatives;
• one of the partners is declared incompetent by the court;
• Early marriages are prohibited in the region of residence.

Relatives also have the right to go to court if they suspect one of the parties of fraud for the purpose of enrichment. The marriage will be considered fictitious and annulled.

Video on the topic

Minimum age for marriage

or
marriageable age
is the age at which a person acquires the right to marry independently, as well as with parental or other consent.

The age of marriage depends on the country and may be different for girls and boys. Until recently, the age of marriage for girls in many countries was lower than for boys, but has now been raised to the age of boys in many places to maintain gender equality. The age and other conditions required for marriage vary from country to country, but are generally set at age eighteen. Most countries allow marriage at an earlier age, with parental consent or judicial approval, and some countries also allow young people to marry if the girl is pregnant. The age of consent should not be confused with the age of majority or the age of sexual consent, although in some places they may be the same thing. In many developing countries, official regulations on the age of consent are merely guidelines. In some societies, marriage to a person (usually a girl) under the age of 18 is considered child marriage. 55 countries in 1962 adopted the Convention on the License of Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriage to legislate the minimum age for marriage, as well as the abolition of customary, religious and tribal laws in this regard.

When the age of marriage is lower under religious law than under the law of the country, then the law of the state prevails. However, some religious communities do not accept the rule of state law in this matter, which can lead to child marriage or forced marriage. The 123 parties to the 1956 Supplementary Convention for the Abolition of Slavery agreed to a minimum age for marriage.

History and social relations

Historically, the age of consent for sexual union was determined by tribal custom or subject to family discussion and decision. In most cases, it coincided with the appearance of signs of puberty: menstruation for a girl and the appearance of pubic hair for a boy.

In ancient Rome, it was customary for a girl to get married and have children soon after puberty. Roman law required the bride to be at least 12 years old. According to Roman law, first marriages for brides aged 12 to 24 required the consent of the bride and her father; but, at the end of the ancient period, Roman law allowed women over 25 to marry without parental consent. Catholic canon law followed Roman law, but in the 12th century the Catholic Church dramatically changed the legal rules regarding marital consent, allowing girls over 12 and boys over 14 to become engaged without parental approval, even if they were married in secret. Parish research confirmed that late medieval women sometimes married against their parents' consent. The Catholic Church's policy of validating secret marriages and marriages without parental consent was controversial, and in the 16th century the French monarchy and the Lutheran Church attempted to end the practice with limited success.

In Western Europe, the influence of Christianity and manorism increased, which created incentives to maintain nuclear families and thus the age of marriage increased; The Western Church instituted marriage laws and customs, marriage laws and practices that undermined large kinship groups. Already from the 4th century, the church abstained from any customs that could lead to an increase in the family, such as adoption, polygamy, cohabitation outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage. The Church has strongly discouraged and prohibited consanguineous marriage, a model of marriage that has provided a means to preserve the lineage (and thus its power) throughout history. The Church also prohibited marriages in which the bride did not give explicit consent to the union. After the fall of Rome, manoralism helped weaken the ties of blood kinship and thus the power of the clans; As early as the 9th century in northwestern France, families who worked on estates (manors) were small, consisting of parents and children, and sometimes grandparents. Church and state become allies in erasing the cohesion and thus the political power of the clans; The church sought to replace traditional religion, which was the connecting link of kinship groups, and substituting the authority of the elders of the kinship group with, despite the antiquity of the religion; At the same time, the power of the king was undermined by uprisings on the part of the most powerful kinship groups, clans or sections, whose conspiracies and murders threatened the power of the state, and also demanded from the owners of the estate (manor) the obedience and pliability of the workers. Just as peasants and serfs lived and worked on farms that they rented from the landowner, so they had to ask the master’s permission to marry; couples, therefore, had to obey the owner of the estate and wait until a small farm was vacated or made available to them so that they could marry and have children; those who could and delayed marriage apparently received a reward from the landowner, those who could not were left without the above-mentioned reward. For example, in medieval England, marriageable age can be seen as a variable depending on economic circumstances, couples delayed marriage until the late 20s, as times were bad at that time and the average teenage age dropped after the Black Death when there was a shortage of workers, there is that teenage marriages in England were not the norm. In medieval Eastern Europe, on the other hand, the patrilocality* of Slavic traditions delayed early and universal marriages (usually brides aged 12-15, with menarche averaging 14), the manorial system was just making its way into eastern Europe and had less influence there were no strict prohibitions on consanguineous marriages on the clan system there.

The first recorded legal age law dates back 800 years. In 1275, in England, as part of the law on rape, the Statute of Westminster 1 made it a crime to “abduct” a “maiden within age” (English: maiden
within age
), with or without her consent.
The phrase "within age" was interpreted
by the jurist Sir Edward Coke to mean under the age of marriage, which at that time was 12 years. In the 12th century, the jurist Gratian, the influential founder of canon law in medieval Europe, set the age of puberty for marriage between 12 and 14 years, but marriage agreements could be made for children over 7 years of age. There have been authoritative statements that consent to marriage could have been given at an earlier age. The marriage will then be valid as long as neither of the two parties dissolve the marriage agreement before reaching puberty, or enter into marital relations. It should be noted that the Court recognized marriages based on marriage agreements concluded under the age of 7 years, despite the words of Gratian; There are records of marriages of 2 and 3 year old children.

The American colonies followed English tradition, but the law was no more than a guide. For example, Mary Hathaway (Virginia, 1689) was only 9 years old when she married William Williams. Sir Edward Cox (England, 17th century) clarified the situation: “marriage of girls under the age of 12 was considered the norm, and the age at which a girl who was a wife and had the right to part of the inheritance from her husband’s property was 9 years old, although her my husband was only four years old.” Reliable data on the age of marriage is very difficult to find. In England, for example, there is reliable data on marriageable age at the beginning of the modern era, which comes from the records only of those who left property on their death. Not only are the records relatively sparse, but not all records bothered to indicate the ages of the participants, and it seems that the more complete the record, the greater the chance of finding young marriages. In addition, historians of the XX-XXI centuries. sometimes show reluctance to accept data on a young age at marriage, instead explaining that existing records are distorted due to misreading of ancient copies of records.

In France, before the French Revolution, the age of marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys. Revolutionary legislation in 1792 raised the age to 13 for girls and 15 for boys. After the adoption of the Napoleonic Code in 1804, the age of marriage was set at 15 years for girls and 18 years for boys. In 2006, the marriageable age for girls was increased to 18 years, the same as for boys.

In recent years, there have been changes in the marriage age for girls and boys, which were eventually equalized and set at 18 years old for that period. In countries where ages are not the same, the age of marriage for girls is usually 2 or 3 years younger than for boys.

Marriage age: right or exception

In most countries the age of marriage is generally 18 years. However, most of these countries have exceptions for minors requiring parental and/or judicial permission. These exceptions vary significantly by country. The United Nations Population Fund has established the following:

In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum age for marriage for women without parental or judicial consent. However, in 146 countries, government law or custom allows a girl under 18 to marry with the consent of her parents or other authorities; In 52 countries, girls under the age of 15 can marry with parental consent. In contrast, 18 is the legal age for non-consensual marriage among men in 180 countries. Additionally, in 105 countries, boys can marry with parental or appropriate authority's consent, and in 23 countries, boys under 15 can marry with parental consent

In Western countries, teenage marriages have become rare in recent years, with their frequency falling sharply over the past few decades. For example, in Finland, where minors can obtain special judicial permission to marry, today there are only 30-40 such marriages per year (and most spouses are 17 years old), while in the early 1990s more than 100 underage marriages.

Statistics by country

In the following tables, if the "Female Allowed (Years)" cell is blank, the contents of the "Men Allowed (Years)" cell indicate the general minimum age.

Africa

Asia

Europe

The age of marriage as a right is set at 18 years in all European countries, with the exception of Andorra, Malta and Scotland, where it is 16 years (for both sexes), and Azerbaijan, where it is 17 years for women. There are exceptions to this general rule (for example, special judicial and/or parental consent is required). In the European Union and Council of Europe, the age of consent is within the jurisdiction of individual member states. The Istanbul Convention, the first legal restrictive instrument to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence, required countries that ratify it to prohibit forced marriages (Article 37) and to ensure that forced marriages can be easily annulled without further victimization (Article 32 ), but makes no mention of the minimum age for marriage.

North America and Central America

Oceania

South America

By religion

Catholic Church

Age set by the Bishops' Conference

Islam

Features of the procedure

Marriage registration is a slow process for adult citizens, and even more so for teenagers. After all, early marriage gives minors the rights and responsibilities of adult members of society. The procedure consists of several stages.

Getting permission

The first authority that future newlyweds need to visit is the local administration. It is there that an application for lowering the marriageable age is submitted and justification for valid reasons.

Package of documents when submitting an application:

• a request to reduce the age of marriage from each of the minors;
• passport of applicants for marriage;
• medical certificate confirming the presence of pregnancy;
• written permission of parents (trustees, adoptive parents);
• health certificate;
• information about the place of official employment;
• information about income.

The guardianship and trusteeship office is given 10 days to make a decision. The presence of parents will be a significant help for teenagers. Adults will help you correctly draw up an application, monitor the procedure for submitting documents, and support the children’s decision in writing.

Submitting an application to the registry office

Minor newlyweds have the right to apply to any branch of the registry office, regardless of their place of residence. The main thing is not to forget to take with you the permit issued by the local government.

When visiting the registry office you will need:

• newlyweds' passports;
• permission to lower the age of marriage;
• receipt for payment of state duty;
• other documents (if necessary).

Having successfully submitted the application, the couple can safely prepare for the special event for 1-2 months. However, there are circumstances that significantly reduce the waiting period, down to one day:

• conscription of the groom for compulsory military service;
• going on a long-term business trip;
• departure for permanent residence in another country;
• short-term leave of a person liable for military service;
• late stages of pregnancy;
• birth of a child;
• threat to the health and life of one of the spouses.

The management of the registry office has the right to reduce the period in other situations. Of course, you will have to provide supporting documents.

Conditions for marriage at 16 years old

The Insurance Code also provides for the possibility of marriage as an exception in the event of special circumstances for persons who have reached the age of partial legal capacity - 14 years (but less than 16 years of age). But the Law also does not provide for these conditions; it only states that these conditions must be documented.

In practice, such conditions most often are:

• pregnancy (must be confirmed by a certificate from a hospital or antenatal clinic);
• emancipation (basis - court decision);
• birth of a child (confirmation - birth certificate).

In this case, written consent to the marriage of the parents or their substitutes (adoptive parents, trustees) is required . If there is a disagreement between parents on this issue, it is resolved through the board of trustees.

According to the Family Code, special permission is required to marry minors. The procedure for obtaining this permission is established by legislation at the level of the constituent entities of the federation, that is, it differs in each region.

State duty

A receipt for payment of the state fee is very important, since without it the application to the registry office will not be accepted. The fee for registering a marriage in 2019 is 350 rubles. Only one of the newlyweds pays the amount.

Payment is made in the following ways:

• bank terminal in the registry office;
• Internet banking of any bank
• Sberbank cash desk;
• State Services portal (the amount will be reduced by 30%).

Details for transferring money are obtained from the registry office. When making a payment, you should enter the data very carefully, because due to errors (for example, in the last name), the application for marriage registration may not be accepted.

Parental consent

The legal representatives of the newlyweds can give consent to enter into an early marriage, but this is not a mandatory condition of legal significance.

In any case, after receiving a decision from the authorities registering the civil status of a young couple, parents or representatives of the newlyweds have the right to appeal these documents through the courts.

invalidating a concluded union between minors in the manner and on the grounds that are provided for in case of marriage with an adult.

A lot depends on the cultural and national characteristics of the region in which the union is planned. There are regions in the Russian Federation where young people live together in a civil union fully from an early age, and only legislative restrictions do not allow such relationships to be formalized.