Under Section 58(5) of the Family Law Act 1986, the courts cannot make a declaration that a marriage was void at its inception. That recently proved fatal to an application for a declaration as to marital status by a husband who had undergone a marriage ceremony in Cameroon.

The husband and wife both held dual Cameroonian and British citizenship, and had been naturalised as British citizens in the mid-2010s. The case was unusual in that there was significant dispute between them as to the circumstances surrounding their relationship. According to the husband, that they had married in a village in Cameroon in January 2003 according to the customs of the local tribe. He had sought asylum in the UK in 2006 and his wife had joined him here in October 2008. He claimed that their marriage had been dissolved in 2022 in a traditional ceremony in Cameroon. On that basis he asserted that they were divorced and sought a declaration as to their marital status under Section 55 of the Act. He also alleged that, having instructed an investigator in Cameroon, he had discovered that his wife had deceived him as to her true identity throughout the relationship.

The wife claimed that she had not known the husband until 2007, when a cousin of hers in the UK had put her in touch with him. They had spoken regularly on the phone and he had asked her to marry him and come to the UK. They had married in a traditional customary ceremony in Cameroon in September 2008: the husband had been in the UK at the time and had been represented by proxy. She claimed that she had travelled to the UK using documents in the name that the husband had previously given to the UK immigration authorities as that of his wife, but that he had always known her real name. She also denied that the divorce ceremony in 2022 had taken place.

Preferring the account put forward by the wife, the High Court observed that, according to the husband's evidence, he had only known her for a few weeks when they married. He had not provided a single photo of the alleged 2003 ceremony and one of his brothers who claimed to have attended it would have been around five years old at the time. Overall, the Court considered the husband's account, which was unsupported by any documentation, to be wholly unbelievable and untrue. The Court concluded that the marriage ceremony had taken place in 2008 and that the divorce ceremony had not occurred.

Aided by expert evidence from a Cameroonian lawyer, the Court found that although the 2008 ceremony had been duly concluded and could have been recognised under Cameroonian law by following the steps needed for civil recognition, those steps had not been taken and the marriage thus had no legal status in Cameroon. In those circumstances, the Court was satisfied that it was bound by the applicable rules of private international law to treat it as a void marriage under English law. That meant that, by virtue of Section 58(5), the Court was unable to make the declaration sought by the husband. However, it considered that it was open to either party to apply for a nullity order on the basis of the factual findings it had made.