A little story I was told in class today.
One of my classmates apparently had a phone call last night from a relative of hers.
Oh good, we have the classic set up for an urban myth straight away – a classmate apparently had a phone call from a [generic] relative – trans. everything that follows is at least third or fourth hand and entirely unattributable to any known source.
Better still, this is really fresh one – one that hasn’t even reached Snopes yet.
This relative of hers is a guy who has something of a weakness for accepting stupid dares when he’s drunk.
It’s get even better as we’re now heading straight for the ‘people do the funniest things when pissed’ variation.
The other day it seems he got drunk with another male friend. After a few too many they were dared to head over to a registry office and demand one of these new same-sex civil partnerships. (These guys are both heterosexual, by the way.)
And yes, we have set-up for the punchline. Male-bonding – strictly hetero, naturally – but with just the merest frisson of homoerotic tension in a good natured, Beavis and Butthead dumb kind of way
And well, the upshot of it all is, he and his friend are now married, and have a certificate to say that they’re partners, and can’t get divorced for at least a year.
Oh well, I suppose they could always push for an annulment on grounds of non-consumation, unless he gets drunk again and gets dared to consumate it.
And the punchline – they got hitched on the spot and now have to wait a year for a divorce unless they take the annulment on non-consumation get out clause … unless – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – they get pissed again in the meantime.
As ever there is just one little detail that the originator of this charming little tale has neglected.
What is the waiting period for civil partnership?
There will be a 15-day waiting period once each person has given notice of intention to register, before the civil partnership can be registered. There will be procedures in place to reduce the 15-day waiting period in exceptional circumstances where there are compelling reasons to do so.
It will also be possible for a civil partnership to be registered at the residence of someone who is housebound, detained or seriously ill and not expected to recover.
There will also be procedures to allow couples to form a civil partnership quickly in the cases of former spouses, one of whom has changed gender under the provisions of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
There are, therefore, only two possible situations in which the story could be true. Either the few drinks which motivated the apocryphal gentlemen in question to seek a civil partnership, spanned a minimum of 16 days or one of the two, strictly heterosexual males was not only not originally a male at all; having undergone female to male gender reassignment – which entails an operation known colloquially as a ‘strappadictomy’ – but was also the other male’s ex-wife.
The only remaining question arising from this story is that of how long it will take to turn up in the Daily Sport as an ‘exclusive’.
Or…
Being very, very drunk is an “exceptional circumstance” with “compelling reasons”.
Perhaps the registrar had been drinking with them.
Had this not come straight from the impeccable source of a relative of a classmate I would suspect it of being total bollocks.
The other thing that they have missed is that one of the few ways in which civil partnership differs from marriage is that there’s no non-consummation get out clause…
Good point, Antonia.
That one did rather puzzle me as by convention consumation, in the marital sense, requires full penitrative intercourse which is not necessarily a valid or applicable concept in the case of civil partnerships.
Oh to be a fly on the wall when they were discussing that in the House of Lords…