First English and Welsh same-sex marriages will happen and be recognised sooner than thought
Gay couples who took advantage of marriage equality overseas will be recognised as married from Thursday 13 March 2014.
Just as with civil partnerships, where at least one partner is terminally ill, same-sex couples will be able to apply to marry from this date too. However as explained below, this will not apply to couples already in a civil partnership.
The official guidance states: “The Registrar General can allow a marriage to take place without the normal 15-day notice period where one of the couple is seriously ill and is not expected to recover, and in other urgent cases such as where a person is due to be deployed overseas in the armed forces. Such marriages of same sex couples will be possible from Thursday, 13 March 2014.”
Before the first civil partnerships, the survivor of a same-sex relationship could face inheritance tax liabilities on the death of their partner, that they would not have faced if they were hetrosexual.
Same-sex couples in civil partnerships cannot get married until an as yet unspecified date later this year. Tragically, this will mean that terminally ill couples who are in a civil partnership, may never be able to marry.
H/T to Jim Waterson of BuzzFeed who alerted us to publication of the Statutory Instrument
