Women and Justice: Keywords

The applicants were a man, a woman, and their child. The man’s inability to obtain a dissolution of his first marriage made it impossible for him to marry the woman, which resulted in their child therefore being deemed “illegitimate.” The Court held that the impossibility of obtaining a dissolution of the first applicant’s marriage under Irish law did not breach the first and second applicants’ rights under Articles 12 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the rights to respect for private and family life and the rights to marry and found a family, respectively). The Court found that Article 12 does not give rise to a right to divorce; and nor does Article 8 extend to an obligation to permit the divorce and re-marriage that the applicants sought. However, the Court unanimously found a violation of Article 8 as regards all three applicants due to the legal situation (“illegitimate” status) of the couple’s child; specifically, the “absence of an appropriate legal regime reflecting the third applicant’s natural family ties amounts to a failure to respect her family life” under Article 8. Finally, the Court found that under the European Convention on Human Rights, the concept of family encompasses the concept of non-marital family.

Among other things, the Children’s Status Act gives children born out of wedlock the same legal privileges as children born to married couples (e.g., inheritance rights, custody, guardianship, etc.) and provides various legal mechanisms (e.g., court orders) to protect these rights.