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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Family Division) Decisions >> El Gamal v Al Maktoum [2011] EWHC B27 (Fam) (22 December 2011) URL: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2011/B27.html Cite as: [2011] EWHC B27 (Fam) |
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FAMILY DIVISION
B e f o r e :
B E T W E E N :
____________________
| NIVIN EL GAMAL | Applicant | |
| - and - | ||
| HRH SHEIKH AHMED BIN SAEED al-MAKTOUM | Respondent |
____________________
Official Shorthand Writers and Tape Transcribers
Quality House, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1HP
Tel: 020 7831 5627 Fax: 020 7831 7737
info@beverleynunnery.com
MR. M. POINTER QC and MR. M. GLASER (instructed by) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
____________________
VERSION
OF JUDGMENT (As Approved)
Crown Copyright ©
MR. JUSTICE BODEY:
A INTRODUCTORY
void
marriage by reason of its failure to comply with the formalities of marriage at English law. She therefore seeks a decree of nullity of marriage. If such a decree is granted she can claim consequential financial orders for herself and would not be limited to the more restricted claims which she makes for S under Schedule 1 of the Children Act 1989. The father denies that any such ceremony took place. If the court is against him and finds that such a ceremony did take place, then his case is that it was too far removed from anything resembling a marriage at English law to amount even to a
void
marriage, and so was in shorthand what has become known as a 'non-marriage' or 'non-existent marriage'. If that be so, it would follow that the mother's claims would be limited to those which she brings on behalf of S in his own right.
very
substantial interim maintenance for S under interim Schedule 1 orders of the court. However, he opposes a Declaration of Parentage which he feels the mother would abuse. She maintains she would not abuse it, and says that S needs and is entitled to formal recognition of his paternity, particularly since, when the father underwent the DNA testing just mentioned, he did so under the pseudonym "Robert Smith".
voluminous
amount of material contained in about 20 lever arch files, and have heard five witnesses. For the mother, I have heard the mother herself, Nadida el Dakak (the mother's Egyptian solicitor) and Teri Pearson, a good friend and former flatmate of the mother. For the father I have heard Ian Edge (expert witness in Islamic law) and Mr. Nurani, solicitor to the father (although not in these family proceedings). It was intended and expected until 10.30 a.m. on the last day of evidence (Monday 19th December 2011, three days ago) that the father would give evidence. When the time came to call him, however, Mr. Pointer QC announced that he (the father) has been required by the ruler of Dubai to attend the UAE's delegation to the 32nd summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council leaders being held this week in Riyadh. It is unsatisfactory that warning of this was not able to be given sooner, since the court could have adjusted its preparatory work and sat different hours, or rearranged the order of witnesses, so as to facilitate the father's attendance, or his evidence being given by
video
link during the course of the week commencing 12th December 2011. Be that as it may, Mr. Pointer was not instructed to and did not seek an adjournment. He simply told me that his client was unavailable during this week and the case then proceeded to submissions. I shall return later (at paragraphs 72 to 74 below) to the impact of this unexpected development.
B THE PSYCHIATRIC EVIDENCE REGARDING THE MOTHER
various
factual disputes between the parties and the allegations levelled against the mother on multiple issues of credibility.
view
and only considers things from this rather narrow perspective. She over-dramatises and is impulsive."
vulnerabilities
in her personality functioning. Dr. Mikhail recorded an occasion, in early May 2010, when such was the mother's level of distress that she entered into a "transient dissociative state" and was found by the police wandering on the M11 motorway. She was reported as being mute and requiring emergency NHS intervention, a reflection of her fragile mental state. As regards the occasions when the mother had experienced fear for her safety and that of S (said by the father to be examples of her manipulative lying) Dr. Mikhail expressed herself as entirely satisfied that these "
paranoid or self-referential concerns reflect a heightened sense of anxiety about her situation and safety and that of her son, in consequence of which they become over-
valued
ideas, i.e. excessive preoccupations. But they do not, and have not at any time in the period that I have looked after her, amount to delusional beliefs, i.e. beliefs that are fixed, unshakeable and based on abnormal reasoning."
view
that the mother does have litigation capacity. At the conclusion of a long report, Dr. Wise expressed the
view
that the first stage in determining the absence of capacity under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is met, but that the second stage is not. In other words, Dr. Wise found in the result that the mother has litigation capacity, being able to 'understand, retain, use and weigh' information about relevant decisions. Dr. Wise stated that as a result of the mother's early life experiences she "had developed an anxiety disorder, not otherwise specified, together with a depressive disorder currently in remission as a result of the stresses of the
various
legal processes in which she has been involved." Dr. Wise stated that the mother demonstrates marked impulsivity in a
variety
of contexts, as indicated by her "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment", and she (Dr. Wise) refers to a "pattern of unstable and intense inter-personal relationships characterised by alternating between extremes of idealisation and devaluation". This is well reflected in the text messages at D below, and by the numerous changes of solicitors which the mother has had in these proceedings (some five or six in number).
C THE CHRONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
visa
running until 2008. She began to share a flat with Teri Pearson, mentioned above. The two of them were out in Dubai in 2003 when they met up with the father. The mother says that she and the father then dated for about 18 months, separating in January 2005. The father says they never dated, but rather that they were "occasional sexual partners" who met for "intermittent sexual relations" in a relationship which was "casual, uncommitted and non-exclusive". He accepts that he would give the mother substantial cash and gifts, but with no particular structure and merely because he had enjoyed being with her. She, I am satisfied, gave him many gifts too.
voucher
for £10,000.
Vuitton
book and a Louis
Vuitton
necklace. She says that at this point the father "
effectively abandoned me both emotionally and financially".
varying
degrees of reasonableness and unreasonableness, to which I will revert in part D.
very
afraid of the father. She is recorded as saying "My husband has divorced me, but we were not legally married just Islam marriage". Her case is that she said this because friends had advised her to that effect, although she maintains that back in 2007, she had believed that the Islamic ceremony would be
valid
under English law (see further at part F below).
view
that both the lollipop and cherry were poisoned and that this represented the father's trying to "get rid" of S. There was also at this time some damage to the front communal door of the mother's building, clearly caused by some technical problem (as other residents told the police). But the mother made what were recorded at the time as "wild allegations" that the damage had been caused by the father. Then a taxi ran into the side of a car in which the mother was travelling, a fact confirmed by a friend at the time. The mother regarded this as the father trying to kill her. All these things were reported by the mother to the police. Steps were taken to ensure that there were security cameras and other measures in place, given the seriousness (on the face of it) of the mother's allegations, including that the father had access to weapons. It is clearly not remotely established that the father was in fact behind any of these events. It is not now being seriously suggested that he was. In my judgment, these were extreme, objectively unreasonable overreactions and over-dramatisations by the mother, being a product of her suspicious and paranoiac (using the expression loosely) mindset, due to her fragile mental and emotional health.
very
ill. The mother repeatedly texted the father seeking financial help. He did not reply to her, even when she texted that she thought S was dying, although he did pass the messages to Mr. Nurani who relayed them to the father's family law solicitors.
via
an Islamic marriage ceremony two years ago (which would make it about April 2008, taken literally). She alleged that the father had been trying to kill S. She mentioned the lollipop, the cherry, and the taxi incidents above, saying that he was planning to get them out of the country to kill them in Egypt. She said that a few days later she had been dreaming all night that she had been killed and that she was scared for her son. On 7th April 2010 the mother obtained an ex parte non molestation order against the father based on the allegation of the phone call two days previously.
very
badly and it was a day or two later, on 1st May 2010, that she was found by the police as mentioned in paragraph 11 above, disorientated and wandering on the M11 motorway.
version
of the full chronology of the events in this matter; but it is sufficient to deal with the issues before me at this hearing. I emphasise that nothing else is before me at all at present, save for the petition for nullity and the consequential side-issues as to credibility which the petition has thrown up.
D THE MOTHER'S TEXT MESSAGES TO THE FATHER
veer
wildly from expressing utter hatred of him (see the text of 19th August 2010, text 98, saying simply "I hate you" seven times) to expressing great love and affection for him, as in her text of 19th May 2011, text 218. There she said: "Life is worthless without you, my love, my pride. I hope there are no hard feelings between us. God keeps you and confers on you a long life so that you can remain with us, as I have no-one in the world but you. I believe there will be a day when we are united again and my dreams come true, where our child lives under the wings of both his mother and father and is not deprived of his father's warm heartedness and affection".
veer
wildly with her mood. They show her able to shoot from the hip one minute and to act or speak quite inconsistently the next. Perhaps the mother got it right when she said in her text of 28th March 2010, text 64, "I love you and I hate you at the same time". That said, I do not consider that the text messages actually throw any direct light on the issues of credibility which present themselves at this hearing.
E DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ON THE FIRST ISSUE: WAS THERE A WEDDING CEREMONY?
venture,
less far ranging. But the findings of the AIT certainly represent a point in the father's favour and one to which I pay careful regard.
vivid
detail. She recorded that she had dreamed also that she was in Harrods, a dream which involved the Queen (i.e. the Queen of England). She dreamed a further dream, also involving the Queen set in a fish restaurant in Alexandria. Her one page record of these dreams says that after two weeks of having them, she found herself to be pregnant with S. It is a self-prepared statement in which she added "I was happy [at being pregnant] but scared of his [the father's] reaction and what would happen between us. Will he divorce me or stay with me
He loves me and he loves the baby so is he going to come back to us?" That reference to the father divorcing her, albeit self-serving, has an air of spontaneity pre-dating the litigation warfare between the parties and it adds some support to the mother's case that she had been through a wedding ceremony. The mother was taken in cross-examination to another strange dream of hers as texted to the father on 5th April 2011 (text 202). She described the dream as "
very
scary, like a woman coming to me saying I'm Jean, the world will not end now and your child is the one who is descended from Queen Nefertiti of Egypt who would change the world in the next Millennium. This is the child born from the Middle East we are all waiting for. That's why he has to have his father and you, daughter of Queen Nefertiti, and he has to be in his places [sic] which the cross growing above him [sic] which she said Saeed (Yusef) will transform the world, unite the world, religion, bringing the world peace
[etc]". She ended that text to the father saying "
I am really scared".
view,
sufficiently possible as an alternative that it originated from some dream or other flight of fancy, borne of the mother's psychiatric/mental fragility at or around that time, as confirmed by the psychiatric reports.
volunteered
the revised date. It was not a revision which she had to make because of anything produced by the father ruling out a December 2006 wedding for example, positive proof that he was not in London in December 2006.
validity,
they require an answer to Mr. Todd's rhetorical question: "given that the fact that the father was in fact in London in December 2006, as was the mother for at least some of the time (for example for ten days between 7th and 17th December) why should the mother go to all this trouble to change her case by taking a different date out of the blue and then retrospectively and falsely concoct documents?" In addition, unless there happened to be a gap in the baby book for the date of the wedding to have been falsely added later, then the mother must have had to construct the whole or much of the baby book retrospectively.
version
of that asserted reference in 2003 to possible marriage, I accept the incident took place. It may have contributed to the mother's "living a dream" of getting married to the father, such that she bought the wedding dress in hopeful anticipation.
very
embarrassing for the father, as journalists would be allowed into court and would be allowed to report on the case'. There are also one or two text messages from the mother to the father which say or imply that she will go to the media, thereby putting him under intended pressure. Mr. Todd's Opening Presentation, prepared when this case was listed for a hearing of all the issues in the round, states: "The mother is keen for the whole case to proceed in public, which she feels would enable S to get recognition as the son of an Arab prince, which he deserves." It is clearly undesirable that a parent should go to the media involving a child as a way of putting pressure on the other parent. On the other hand, it is patent that the mother has felt throughout that there is not "a level playing field" between herself and the father, given his authority, power, influence and wealth. A fair reading of the texts at the beginning of January 2010 shows that, rightly or wrongly, she was genuinely
very
distressed at her child's serious illness when she went to the Sunday Times. In the particular circumstances I do not consider that it would be right to hold this sort of manipulative conduct against her as a significant factor in deciding who is telling the truth regarding the 11th January 2007.
view
that a full explanation of all the symbols has not necessarily been given and, if that be so, then it is probably for some reason which the mother does not wish to disclose. But I do not think it possible to draw any firm conclusions as to what that reason might be. I shall take this into account when reaching my decision.
via
the company/trust structure. I am not satisfied on the evidence which I have seen that the mother embarked on an interior design project at the father's request. She may have been on the point of putting forward some ideas, but in my
view,
on her own initiative and not as arranged with the father. Then she became pregnant, so nothing further happened regarding the flat. The issue does not in my
view
significantly inform the issue of credibility.
very
infrequently: in fact, only about four recorded times in 2007 according to the mother's diary. However, some couples live their lives like that and I cannot see it as anything other than a factor tending, and merely tending, to cast doubt on the mother's case.
various
references in the documents to Khabbalah, including even to one about her having changed her religion from Islam to Khabbalah. At paragraph 16 he sets out the references in her diaries to her attending at many Khabbalah observances and events from April 2006 (nine months before the alleged Islamic ceremony) to February 2007. The mother's case before me is that she remains a Muslim, but with a strong interest in Khabbalah which she finds gives her great support. The submissions made on her behalf to the immigration authorities (above) however go much further than that and imply that she has (or had then) positively abandoned her Islamic faith to practise Khabbalah in its place. Mr. Pointer's submission is that the mother is now fully converted to Khabbalah, which she strongly denies. I rather side with the mother on this: in that a person can regard him or herself as being of a particular religion whilst still worshipping regularly elsewhere because (for example) he or she finds it helpful, or likes the music, or for any number of personal reasons. The only credibility point which I see on this issue of religion is that, if I am right, then the mother's alleged adherence to Khabbalah in the immigration proceedings was
very
much hyped-up and exaggerated to create a case for asylum: and that is what I find.
very
short internet newscast issued by the Emirate government and handed up by Mr. Pointer on Monday 19th December 2011 speaks of the Summit being on only the 19th and 20th December 2011, that is Monday and Tuesday of this week (it now being Thursday). The father did not instruct that any application be made for an adjournment and none was made. Mr. Pointer simply told me that he would be going straight into his submissions on the father's behalf without calling the father, which is what happened. This is tantamount to the father saying that he does not propose to attend to give any evidence in support of his own case, nor in respect of the rigorous adverse case which he instructed be deployed against the mother. Although Mr. Pointer told me, and of course I accept, that he (Mr. Pointer) was personally only told of the father's asserted GCC commitment on Sunday 18th December 2011 (the day before the father's evidence was due) I cannot, without more, accept that the father has himself been unaware of this forthcoming commitment. He must have known a reasonable time in advance that he was being or would be asked to attend the summit, and that this would or might clash with this hearing. I note that on the jointly prepared Witness Template submitted on Tuesday of last week, 13th December 2011, the father is down to give evidence on Monday 19th December 2011 and that the case ran exactly to that timetable. So everyone was clearly wrong-footed by Mr. Pointer's announcement that the father would not be giving evidence, just seconds before he was due to be called.
variety
of issues of fact, as Mr. Todd mentioned to me in his final submissions.
various
issues, including of course the alleged ceremony, as that to which the mother has subjected herself.
version
of events, there is no mandate for this. It was an Islamic wedding ceremony, or it was nothing. I have concluded, on balance, that it was the former. It is not for me to second guess, even if I could, the precise motivations of either party which led him/her to take this step.
F THE SECOND ISSUE: WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS THE LEGAL EFFECT IN ENGLISH LAW OF THE ISLAMIC WEDDING CEREMONY? DID IT CREATE A
VOID
MARRIAGE OR NO MARRIAGE AT ALL?
void
on the following grounds only, namely that
" (a) it is not avalid
marriage under the provisions of the Marriage Acts 1949 to 1986, that is to say where (3) the parties have intermarried in disregard of certain requirements as to the formation of marriage ".
void
and when does it create nothing, or a so-called 'non-marriage') has been the subject of a number of decisions. In R
v.
Bham [1966] 1 QB 159, a decision directly on the Marriage Acts, a Mohammedan leader of a Muslim religious sect was charged with and convicted of the offence of solemnising a marriage other than in a licensed building. The service had been a Nichan in a private house, performed in accordance with Islamic law and would have created a potentially polygamous marriage. The then Court of Criminal Appeal allowed the defendant's appeal against his conviction, describing his counsel's submissions as correct that:
" the Marriage Act 1949 is dealing throughout with marriages as known to and permitted by English domestic law It does not seem to the court that the provisions of the Act have any relevance or application to a ceremony which is not and does not purport to be a marriage of the kind that is allowed by English domestic law. That this was a ceremony under the Islamic law admits of no doubt but unless the 'marriage' purporting to be solemnised under Islamic law is also a marriage of the kind allowed by English law, it is not a marriage with which the Marriage Act 1949 is concerned What, in our judgment, was contemplated by this Act and its predecessors in dealing with marriage and its solemnisation and that to which alone it applies was the performing in England of a ceremony in a form known to and recognised by our law as capable of producing, when there performed, avalid
marriage. For the Act to have any application to the ceremony, in our judgment, [it] must at least be one which will prima facie confer the status of husband and wife on the two persons."
Gereis
v.
Yagoub [1997] 3 FCR 755 Judge Aglionby; AM
v.
AM [2001] 2 FLR 6 Hughes J. (as he then was); Gandhi
v.
Patel [2002] 1 FLR 603 Park J.; and Hudson
v.
Leigh [2009] 2 FLR 1129, a decision of my own. In AM
v.
AM a man and a woman of the Islamic faith (the man already married, as both knew) underwent a ceremony of marriage in a flat in London conducted by an Islamic Mufti. There was an exchange of rings and
vows
were taken. Friends attended and the wife wore a wedding dress, with hat and
veil.
A certificate of marriage was signed by both parties. All concerned intended the marriage to be a formal marriage by the Islamic process. Hughes J. held obiter that the reasoning applied in R.
v.
Bham should be applied and he therefore found that the ceremony did not give rise to a
valid
marriage (plainly), nor even to a
void
marriage susceptible to the grant of a declaration of nullity (see para.58). He stated that
" Unless a marriage purports to be of the kind contemplated by the Marriage Acts it is not, I hold, a marriage for the purposes of S.11 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 It is clear that the present ceremony did not begin to purport to be a marriage according to the Marriage Acts, with or without fatal defects. It was not conducted under the rites of the Church of England, nor was there ever any question of an application for, still less a grant, of a Superintendent Registrar's certificate, and it was conducted in a flat which was clearly none of the places which was authorised for marriage. The ceremony was consciously an Islamic one rather than such as is contemplated by the Marriage Acts Nobody purported to conduct or take part in a Marriage Act 1949 ceremony, and the fact that no-one applied their mind to how the English law wouldview
what they did does not alter that conclusion. It is not only a question of polygamy which ipso facto takes this ceremony outside s.11, but the fact that it in no sense purported to be effected according to the Marriage Acts, which provide for the only way of marrying in England."
v.
Patel. There, having stated the basic proposition that it is the law of the State where the ceremony takes place which governs the question of formal requirements, Park J. said
" English law recognises thevalidity
of a marriage conducted in an overseas jurisdiction if the ceremony complies with the requirements of that jurisdiction, even if it would not have complied with the nearest equivalent requirements which apply under the law of England. The other side of the coin is that if a ceremony which takes place in England is to create a relationship which English law will recognise as a marriage, it must comply with the formal requirements of English law. Those requirements are mostly contained in the Marriage Act 1949 If a man and a woman whose families originated abroad take part in this country in a ceremony which, by the traditions of their own community, would or might give rise to a lawful marriage but the ceremony does not comply with the Marriage Act 1949, they are not married in the eyes of English law."
He found that the ceremony "failed in multiple respects" to comply with the formal requirements of the Marriage Act 1949 and therefore was incapable of creating a marriage recognised as a marriage (not even a
void
one) under English law. He held that the alleged marriage was in law a 'non-marriage' because it 'purported to be a marriage according to a foreign religion' and made 'no attempt to be an English marriage within the Marriage Acts'.
v.
Leigh [2009] 2 FLR 1129 I reviewed these authorities, quoting additionally an article by Rebecca Probert, Lecturer in Law at the University of Warwick, "When are we married?
Void,
non-existent and presumed marriages".
Vol.
22 Legal Studies 2000 p.398. There she said:
"It is clear from the logic or lack of logic of the Marriage Act 1949 that a concept of non-marriage is necessary since a marriage conducted outside the framework of the Act can be neithervoid
nor
valid."
I concluded in Hudson
v.
Leigh that there exists a concept (in shorthand) of 'non-marriage' known to English law, it having been submitted to me that there was not. But I found it impossible to achieve any definition. I said in paragraph 79 that:
"Questionable ceremonies should I think be addressed on a case by case basis, taking account of thevarious
factors and features mentioned above including particularly, but not exhaustively: (a) whether the ceremony or event set out or purported to be a lawful marriage; (b) whether it bore all or enough of the hallmarks of marriage; (c) whether the three key participants (most especially the officiating official) believed, intended and understood the ceremony as giving rise to the status of lawful marriage [I was referring to lawful under English law]; and (d) the reasonable perceptions, understandings and beliefs of those in attendance. In most if not all reasonably foreseeable situations, a review of these and similar considerations should enable a decision to be satisfactorily reached."
"I believed, both that the ceremony gave rise to avalid
Islamic marriage and that a
valid
Islamic marriage was accepted as a
valid
marriage for the purposes of the law of England and Wales. I believed the father shared this belief and that we both believed that the ceremony gave rise to a marriage which was
valid
in the eyes of the secular law of this country."
He refers also to paragraph 17 of the same statement, where she states the belief that the Imam felt the same. Relying on these passages, he makes the submission that in this case the intention of the parties is the all important factor, converting a ceremony which failed to comply with the Marriage Acts into a marriage, albeit a
void
one, (
void
as a result of having so failed). This was a refrain of his submissions on the law, differentiating this case, he asserted, from the sort of case (like Hudson
v.
Leigh) where a ceremony may be performed and undergone when no-one intends that a marriage compliant with English law should be created.
valid
Islamic ceremony of marriage. Putting it
very
shortly, nowadays a written contract or some written evidence is generally required by the courts in Islamic countries, although a court may exceptionally hear oral evidence instead. It would be rare to find a customary Islamic marriage (known as an "Urfi") without writing, and it would be unlikely, says Mr. Edge, that an Imam, certainly one from London, would even perform such a ceremony without a written contract. I pause to say that there is no evidence here of where the Imam came from; he may have practised in London or he may not. The gist of Mr. Edge's evidence was that this requirement for writing has become widely known, to the extent that the traditional Islamic ceremony has actually come to be known generally as a "Katib al Kitaab", meaning the writing of the agreement. The evidence of Nadida el Dakak, the mother's Egyptian solicitor, resonated with this expert evidence from Mr. Edge. When the mother told her of the intended secret marriage, Miss el Dakak says she advised the mother against it; but the mother was headstrong and went through with it. Miss el Dakak advised the mother that if the father was insisting on this sort of marriage ceremony, then she (the mother) must be confident that he would declare it later, and she advised her 'to secure her future'. Miss el Dakak said in her oral evidence that "
in Egypt we don't like secret marriages".
very
briefly summarised (and the transcript of which needs to be read in full) and the evidence of Miss el Dakak, I find it hard to accept that the mother would have considered this ceremony, conducted secretly with no writing, as being one which would be readily recognised in (say) Egypt. It would have been more likely that it would have not been so recognised, and it would be surprising if the mother was not aware of this at the material time. In addition, she was well in with her interest in Khabbalah by January 2007 and would appear to have been at least ambiguous as to her religious beliefs at that time.
view
her expressions of belief that the ceremony would be
valid
by both Islamic and English law as self-serving. She may perhaps have come to the belief that that is what she thought that the time, but I find it unlikely that she actually did so. She may have had some idealistic dream or wish that it would be
valid,
and it may have caused her to feel 'freed up' to have a child by the father. But that sort of hope is not the same as an intention to create a
valid,
recognised marriage with a genuine belief that the ceremony could and would do so.
valid
can serve to convert something which, on the above authorities, would otherwise have been a 'non-marriage' into a (
void)
marriage. I have no doubt that intention is relevant to the status achieved or not achieved by a questionable ceremony, as being one of the many considerations which need to be taken into account. It is particularly relevant in the presumably unusual circumstances where the parties did not intend to create a
valid
marriage, or where they realised that for some reason they would not be able to do so. But the converse does not apply. It is not the law, in my judgment, where no or minimal steps are taken to comply with the Marriage Acts and so the marriage does not set out or purport to be a marriage under those Acts, that it nevertheless suffices if the participants hopefully intended, or believed, that the ceremony would create one.
valid.
In my judgment, that amounts to nothing done by the parties to show an attempt to be part of a ceremony set up to or purporting to comply with the formal requirements of English law. In such circumstances, there exists nothing here in English law susceptible to a decree of nullity under S.11 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. There was a wholesale failure to comply with the formal requirements of English law. This was not, as submitted, a
void
marriage but was, in shorthand, a 'non-marriage'. Accordingly, the nullity petition must be dismissed, leaving outstanding the Schedule 1 proceedings claiming support for S. Given the
vast costs already spent on this acrimonious litigation, and given that the father can pay any reasonable order which the court would make, I urge the parties now to redouble their efforts to reach a negotiated settlement without further expenditure of costs.