British Citizen marrying a Taiwanese Citizen

I am a British female (England) planning to marry a Taiwanese male next year. I soon realized I need to do a lot of work to actually get married before we have the ceremony next year.

I have found out that I DON’T NEED TO GO BACK TO THE UK OR GO TO HONG KONG! However, I am having difficulty trying to find the correct links to order a ‘Letter of Single Status’ online from the UK please can any provide me with links. It just keeps sending me back to ‘Contact Taipei British Embassy’ for more information (who are very UNHELPFUL)

Thank you in advance.

Keep also in mind if you marry in Taiwan, your marriage (and divorce, child rights…) will be regulated bu Taiwan laws, and they they are much less favourable to women than in Europe.

Here you go:
https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/contact_us.asp
Send them an email: certificate.services@gro.gsi.gov.uk saying you want to order a letter of single status.
Then follow the steps another poster kindly provided in this thread:

Do the community a favour. Post the process you go through step-by-step.

You haven’t mentioned which country in the UK you are from. That would be great information of help to others.

1 Like

Do you know where I can read upon the rights of foreign female married to a Taiwanese guy online? I mean regardless we will marry here but it would be good to know what my rights are here.

Thank you so much!

Yes, I have been following this thread and luckily it saved my money and time. We were about to look into HongKong. I am actually returning to England next month for 2 weeks but it wasn’t enough time to get this CNI. I was thinking this was ridiculous to take all these measures for a certificate until I saw this thread you also advised.

I’ll email them! I will definitely update the thread with every step I take for it to be up to date as of 2017.

I don’t think the meaning of being married under UK law depends on where you were married. So getting married outside the uk should not take away any UK rights. I imagine the same goes on the Taiwan side.

It depends.

In the Act Governing the Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements, family law starts at Art. 45.
http://law.moj.gov.tw/Eng/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=B0000007

In the Civil Code, family starts at Art. 967.
http://law.moj.gov.tw/Eng/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=B0000001

1 Like

Oh, so by the looks of it Beitouzhen was correct and it would probably be in the OP’s interests to be married in the UK.

But what happens if we marry in England, then my partners rights are in jeopardy? Either way I don’t see it effecting us too much. We can get our marriage recognized in England in the future if needs be. But doubt it highly.

Slightly OT, but bearing in mind that citizens of the UK can easily resume their British citizenship following renunciation (but only once), do you think you will opt for Taiwanese naturalization?

1 Like

Hi Emily, I imagine that your marriage has the same meaning in UK law regardless of where you were married. So it should have no bearing in the UK.

Cant confirm that now, I am not a lawyer or anything, but that is how I understand it myself.

1 Like

I would just like to give a big THANK YOU to all contributors, for their detailed instructions on how to obtain correct documentation allowing a UK national (from England) to marry a Taiwanese woman in Taiwan. I followed the steps, obtaining the letter of single status (from 16yrs after DOB to now) and the apostile, verified by the Taipei representative office in the UK, then off to Taiwan to be verified by the ministry of foreign affairs, then to the courts to be notarized (along with the Chinese translation) and finally to the local registry office. As this was a very local office in Zhushan (Nantou County) the woman working in there were very excited and did their best to register our marriage and provide us with multiple copies of Chinese and English certificates. They did not question the fact that the letter of single status was only valid up to 18 months prior to now. We encountered no issues, due to the detailed instructions in this thread.
Thanks again :grin:

Unexpectedly our baby girl was born two weeks early and we didnt get married until one week after she was born. Hospital refuses to put me as the father on the birth certificate even though we are now married. Damn shame but Im hoping the HMPO will accept the Household Registration which has us listed as married parents of our daughter (we have several english copies)

3 Likes

I have read that in Taiwan you won’t get listed as the father when the conception birth of the child was before the marriage.

You will need to do a DNA test to prove fathership or adopt your own child.

Edit: rumor

1 Like

Where did you read that?

The hospital just goes by the spouse on the mother’s ID, they don’t care when you got married.

1 Like

Not sure, it was a couple of year ago when we had our daughter. But she was conceived two weeks after marriage. So it did not affect us and I did not follow up.
Might be not true / some rumors.

It just sounds like the sort of thing that would be difficult to prove or disprove. :idunno:

But this quote is about birth before marriage.

I am still weirded out by the fact that Taiwanese count child’s age is from the ‘conception day’ and not the actual birth day. At least official documents list the birthday as usual.

1 Like

Gaboman is correct, if the mothers ID has no spouse listed, then the hospital will refuse to add a father to the birth cert. Immediately after being issued the martiage certificate, they issue the new ID with the spouses name on it. The conception date is irrelevant, we spoke to the nurses and they said so long as you have both parents listed on the ID at the time of birth then they will both be on the birth cert.

1 Like

Hello Zunzazun,

As your post appears to be one of the more up to date on this subject i wondered if you could answer a few questions for me as i am in the process of looking into my marriage options here in Taiwan.

Did you or your partner obtain a “letter of no trace” or a “Certificate of no impediment” in order to get married?

Based on my research and my communications with the government back in the UK, they are able to issue a no trace letter to those abroad but a no impediment certificate.

Although the Taiwanese authorities appear to suggest that only the no impediment certificate is admissible for marriage here, hence all the confusion on various discussion threads about going back to the UK and or HK.

Would you be able to tell me the steps you followed after obtaining whichever letter you got in order to get it legalised and apostilled, i assume you enlisted family or friend help back in the UK?

I would appreciate any help you or anyone reading this post can offer so as to avoid onerous costs and time involved in flying to the UK or HK.

Thank you all!