Bellinger v Bellinger
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 02 November 2000 |
| Date | 02 November 2000 |
| Court | Family Division |
FAMILY DIVISION
Before Mr Justice Johnson
Gender - determination for marriage purposes
For the purpose of determining the validity of a marriage, a person's gender was that which had been determined at birth by reference to the congruence of chromosomal, genital and gonadal characteristics as set out in Corbett v Corbett (orse Ashley)ELR ([1971] P 83).
Mr Justice Johnson so held in the Family Division on November 2, 2000 when dismissing the petition by Mrs Bellinger for a declaration that she was validly married within the terms of section 11 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973.
HIS LORDSHIP said that the applicant, supported by her husband, submitted that she was female at the time of their marriage in 1981 and that Corbett should be reconsidered in the light of changed social conditions and improved medical knowledge.
The Attorney-General, intervening, contended that her biological characteristics at birth having been congruent, she was male when she married regardless of the fact that she had earlier undergone medical treatment and an operation for gender re-assignment; if reform of that area of the law were needed it should be comprehensive and left to Parliament.
While accepting that medical research showed increasing recognition that sexual differences in the brain were an additional factor in...
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Bellinger v Bellinger
...1 FLR 324. AppealWith the leave of the Court of Appeal, the petitioner appealed from the decision of Johnson J made on 2 November 2000 ([2000] 3 FCR 733) wherein he refused to grant her petition for a declaration that the marriage celebrated between Mr Bellinger and herself was valid at the......
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R (on the application of Christie Elan-Cane) v Secretary of State for the Home Department
...which courts have reached their decisions in cases such as Corbett v Corbett [1971] P 83, W v W [2001] Fam 111 and Bellinger v Bellinger [2001] 1 FLR 389. Although at one time the terms “sex” and “gender” were used interchangeably, (and confusingly still are on occasions), due to an increas......
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Bellinger v Bellinger
...that the marriage was valid at its inception and is subsisting. The trial judge, Johnson J, refused to make this declaration: see [2001] 1 FLR 389. So did the Court of Appeal, by a majority of two to one: see [2001] EWCA Civ 1140, [2002] 2 WLR 411. The majority comprised Dame Elizabeth B......