Celebration of religious marriages which are illegal from the civil standpoint in chile

Abstract

After 120 years without any essential changes, in 2004 the new Civil Marriage Act re-enacted the paragraph of the Criminal Code dedicated to the celebration of illegal marriages, derogating some articles and modifying others. One of the perceivable orientations is the renewed consideration of the religious marriage. In this work we will analyse, from a dogmatic standpoint, the aforementioned offences, highlighting, from the civil standpoint, the category of the illegal religious marriages, especially, the situation of the canonic marriage. For order and systematization purposes, this is divided into four parts: The first part refers to illegal marriages; the second, to the legal good protected by the offences contemplated in the paragraph of celebration of illegal marriages; the third part is a particular analysis of the offences; and the fourth part refers to the criminal process.