On the Limitation and Improvement of the System of Invalid Marriage in China

Invalid marriage was firstly established in the revised Chinese Marriage Law in 2001,which accelerated the improvement of Chinese marriage law system and made the marriage legislation in China a big step forward.On the other hand,the system of invalid marriage arouses much academic controversy as well.Specifically,the defects of the system lie in the following five aspects: the scope of invalid and voidable marriage;the regulation that the marriage registration office is also able to declare the marriage null and void; the unfairness resulting from the principle that invalid or voidable marriage is invalid from the beginning;no specific protection for children;and the invariability of judicial decision on invalid marriage.Therefore,the China's system of invalid marriage should be further improved according to the national conditions.