ABSTRACT
Many family law syllabuses begin by looking at the relationships between adults and in particular at the law surrounding marriage. This chapter proposes the law on who is able to marry and what makes a marriage void or voidable. Whereas once marriage was the preserve of the heterosexual couple, it is now possible for transsexuals to marry in their acquired gender and gay and lesbian marriages are now legally valid. The chapter includes some exam questions on nullity, which are likely to take the form of either a problem question asking the student to identify whether a marriage can be ended because of nullity and if so under which ground, or an essay question exploring the role of nullity in today's society. Good answers evaluate the effectiveness and fairness of the approaches and consider whether the Gender Recognition Act has taken the approach it has because it is concerned with gender identity rather than sex identity.
