CELEBRATION.--For the civil celebration of marriage the contracting parties, or their duly empowered proxies, appear before the civil officer of the commune, attended by competent witnesses. If the marriage is celebrated in the official bureau of the commune two witnesses are sufficient; if outside of such bureau six witnesses are required.
Any civil officer celebrating a marriage contrary to these provisions incurs penal punishment.
ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A Catholic marriage--that is, one solemnized according to the canonical law--can only be annulled by an ecclesiastical tribunal and according to the laws of the Catholic Church enforceable in Portugal.
A sentence of an ecclesiastical tribunal annulling a marriage is executed by the civil authority of the land.
A marriage concluded before a civil officer in the form established by the civil law of the land can only be annulled by a civil court.
JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A separation of the person and goods may be had for the following causes:
2. Adultery of the husband, if such adultery creates a public scandal or if the husband brings his concubine into the home he has established for his wife.
3. Sentence of one of the spouses to life imprisonment.
DIVORCE.--Under the law of Portugal as it existed down to the day when King Manuel II. was dethroned and a Republic declared there was no such thing as divorce recognized. Portugal has been for centuries a Catholic country, and the decrees of the Council of Trent, as well as all the other rules and regulations concerning marriage stated by the Catholic Church, have been accepted by Portugal as part of the law of the land. However, since December 1, 1910, when the present provisional government was constituted, certain new laws have been promulgated by government decree. One of these new laws relates to divorce and is most modern and radical in its scope. It permits the courts to grant absolute divorces for a number of reasons, including "mutual consent of the parties."
Whether such laws, created by proclamation instead of legislation, will be incorporated into the inevitable new Civil Code of Portugal is a problem for the future. Our endeavour in this chapter has been to state the organic law of Portugal as it at present exists, untouched by legislation on the statute books of that ancient land.