HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 25 (ACN) Recognizing de facto unions in the Cuban Magna Carta is an important step towards a more plural and inclusive society and fits the constitutional provisions to the ongoing situation.
According to Leonardo Pérez Gallardo, president of the Cuban Society of Civil and Family Law of the National Union of Cuban Jurist, common-law marriages are today one of the most common family models, and not only in Cuba.
“There are many reasons for this,” he says, “ranging from the fear of all the consequences of marriage from a patrimonial viewpoint to the procedures to get a possibly contentious divorce, which in certain rural areas and due to sexist stereotypes is bound to be discriminatory against women.
“In Cuba, to date, a marriage can not only be formalized with a view to the future, of course, but it also has retroactive effects to be considered by a notary or Civil Status registrar, or even by consuls or vice consuls. The Cuban Constitution of 2019 broke with a long tradition of trying to equate the de facto union to marriage; or to conceive a common-law union by recognizing cohabitation between people of different sexes based on permanence and giving them more legal power.”
He also explained that the new constitutional text established that marriage is not the only founding fact of family relations, giving people the chance, based on the right to free development of personality, to choose their family model of choice or simply the right to not form a new family.
According to media reports, the National Population and Housing Census of 2012 revealed that 52% of the people claiming to have a steady partner said that they were legally married, whereas 48% were not.
Nos reservamos el derecho de no publicar los comentario que incumplan con las normas de este sitio