The Non-marital Union: The Statutory Spouse (Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago)

• Pages: 54-68

CHAPTER 3

THE NON-MARITAL UNION:

THE STATUTORY SPOUSE

(Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica,

Trinidad and Tobago)

1. INTRODUCTORY

In the Barbadian case of Re Adams, Wilfred George Maclain,1Chandler J. observedin his opening

remarks that “The history of family relationships in Barbados is an interesting one, which gave

rise to the nuclear family unit, relationships based on consensual cohabitation and visiting rela-

tionships”. Although the judge made his observations with reference to the Barbadian society,

his comments are equally relevant to the other CC jurisdictions, in large part due to the

region’s shared socio-cultural and economic history, which has impacted, if not shaped, the

familial relationships and structures of the CC jurisdictions covered in this text.

This is not to say that the conventional definition of marriage as described by Lord

Penzance in Hyde v Hyde and Woodmansee2modified somewhat by the recognition of non—

Christian marriages, more particularly Hindu and Muslim marriages in the jurisdictions of

Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, is not applicable to all the CC jurisdictions.

However what is common place, if not the norm, in the region are non-marital relationships.

Essentially, the non-marital relationships of the region may be classified from the transient

to one which bears all the hallmarks of a stable de jure marriage. The latter category of non-

marital relationship has been given, for specified purposes, statutory recognition in the CC

jurisdictions of Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, (the statutory

spouse jurisdictions) with Barbados taking the lead since the early 1980s with the coming into

operation on February 1st, 1982 of the Family Law Act CAP. 214 (FLA).

2. CLASSIFYING THE NON-MARITAL UNION

The various classifications of non-marital relationships were examined in several academic

writings prominent amongst which are the seminal work of Edith Clarke, appropriately enti-

tled My Mother who Fathered Me,3M.G. Smith’s West Indian Family Structure,4and more

recently, a journal article by Sampson Owusu, “Union Other Than Marriage Under the

Barbados FLA 1981.”5

Although Owusu’s article focused on the Barbados FLA which was considered ground-

breaking legislation and was modelled on the Family Law Act 1975, Australia, the

classifications are equally applicable to the other CC jurisdictions considered in this chapter.

As Owusu noted, sociologists, in particular Smith,6have classified the types of conjugal rela-

tionships in the Caribbean into the following categories:

1 BB 2013 HC 7 at 1.

2 (1866) L.R. 1P&D 130 at 133.

3 (1966) London, George Allen & Urwin.

4 (1962) Seattle: University of Washington Press.

5 Anglo-American Law Review (1992)Vol.22 (No.4) 449–485.

6 See Smith M.G. Plural Society in the West Indies(1965) Berkeley: University of California Press.