Our series on forgotten advances in women's rights in four episodes:
Until 2005 ... women had to wait 300 days before remarrying
Until 2006 ... the minimum age for marriage was still 15 for women (February 28)
Until 2016 ... periodic protections were not essential products (March 1)
Until 2017 ... the clitoris was banned from SVT manuals (March 2)
Love doesn't wait, they say.
Until January 1, 2005, however, widows and divorced women had to be patient if they wanted to marry again.
To be able to remarry after the death of the husband or the dissolution of a union, they were asked to wait almost 10 months before being able to accomplish such a project.
300 days precisely.
This so-called validity period (article 228 of the Civil Code), repealed by the law of May 26, 2004 relating to divorce, was imposed on them in order to avoid any “confusion” or “uncertainty” about the paternity of an unborn child. .
“You have to be sure that the lady is not pregnant, do you understand?” Odile, 66, a young retiree from Paris and married for a second time, quipped.
When I met the man who would become my second husband in 1986, he too was married.
After separating from our ex-spouses, we didn't want to get married right away but I knew I wasn't free to do so immediately anyway.
I was like temporarily under guardianship.
And this, unlike my future husband.
Around me, few people were shocked by this interference, ”recalls the former teacher.
The registrar could refuse to celebrate the marriage
The objective was therefore to avoid conflicts of paternal filiation concerning a child who could have been conceived when the spouses were in the process of divorce, or even during the period preceding the death of the husband.
"If this was the case, it gave rights to the patrimony of the deceased", explains Me Magali Gibert, lawyer at the Paris Bar, specializing in family property law.
What about the refractory lovers, determined not to respect this deadline?
It was adventurous to say the least.
The registrar could indeed refuse to celebrate the marriage.
“It was an irrebuttable presumption (
Editor's note, which prohibits bringing evidence to the contrary
): the husband was the father.
To avoid a conflict of paternity, of transmission of property, this deadline was therefore imposed on widowed and divorced women, ”explains Me Gibert.
The validity period was intended to be one of the many tools to protect the “family” value created by the institution of marriage.
It was one of a set of rules, inherited from the Civil Code of 1804, promoting family cohesion: a single couple, the legitimate household, a single filiation, that resulting from marriage.
Even if it means twisting, sometimes, the biological reality by a false legal affiliation.
An easing in the early 1970s
“From the beginning of the 1970s, the period of emptiness became more flexible.
Women could present a medical certificate proving that they were not pregnant, for example, and be allowed to remarry.
With the arrival of DNA tests, knowing if the man was the father of a child was no longer a problem.
The legislator may have said, in 2004, that the deadline for emptiness was a little archaic, ”the lawyer quipped.
Such a measure was also abolished in Chile ... in 2020 but still exists in Japan and in Muslim marriage law.
I just found out about the validity period in Japan, I did not know such a concept but I am shocked
It has been relaxed but it still exists
- LeMilKa 🌸 (@LeMilKa_) January 4, 2021
“It is completely in line with patriarchal ideology.
The control of filiation is the central core of male domination and this period of emptiness was nothing other than a means of controlling the reproduction of women.
Wife and children are then the properties of the pater familias: can I pass my name on to him?
My goods ?
It is for this reason that female infidelity was for a long time much more heavily penalized than that of men ”, analyzes Céline Piques, spokesperson for the association Osez le feminisme!
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And the latter to draw a parallel between this 300-day period, imposed by law, and the time of mourning, imposed by society for widows.
The double penalty.
“For a long time they had to wear black clothes, like a message sent saying that they were not available, that a period of solitude had to be respected.
But what were they forbidden?
To meet another man, quite simply.
"