In April 2026, Together responded to a Scottish Government consultation on potential reforms to several areas of family law. Our response focused on questions about whether Scotland should:

1. raise the legal age of marriage and civil partnership from 16 to 18, and
2. extend the forced marriage offence

The current law

Currently, any person aged 16 or over may marry or enter into a civil partnership in Scotland. The forced marriage offence criminalises any use of violence, threats, or other forms of coercion intended to cause a person to enter into a marriage or civil partnership without their free and full consent. However, as noted in the consultation paper, forced marriage legislation does not currently protect individuals solely on the basis of their age.

Support for increasing the age of marriage to 18

We made clear in our response that Scottish Government should legislate to raise the minimum age of marriage and civil partnership from 16 to 18, without exception. Not only would this help to bring Scots law in line with international standards set by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (‘UN Committee’), but it would also lay the foundation for more robust protections for the rights of children and young people in Scotland. It would carry implications for the further safeguarding of their best interests and their rights to life, survival and development; to be heard; to protection from harm, abuse, and neglect; to health; to education; and to protection from sexual and other forms of exploitation and abuse.

Within the UK, Scotland is also falling behind. In England and Wales, 16 and 17- year-olds are protected under the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, which raised the legal age of marriage and civil partnership from 16 to 18. The Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill, which aims to secure the same outcome in Northern Ireland, was introduced to the Northern Ireland Assembly in March 2026. The status quo in Scotland thus not only highlights our lack of progress relative to the other parts of the UK, but also runs counter to the UNCRC Act and the shared ambition of Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament which saw it pass. These developments, combined with a year-on-year increase in the number of marriages between 16 to 19-year-olds in Scotland from 2022 to 2024, mean that it is crucial for Scottish Government to make the necessary legislative changes to honour its commitment to making Scotland the best place in the world for children to grow up.

Extending the forced marriage offence

We also voiced our support for legislation to extend the forced marriage offence to criminalise all conduct intended to cause a person under the age of 18 to enter into a marriage or civil partnership, regardless of whether coercion was involved. This would better protect victims, particularly those entering into unions performed in traditional, religious, and/or otherwise non-binding settings that may not be protected by a change to the legal age of marriage. However, we expressed concern at the status quo that whether a child is eligible to enter into a marriage or civil partnership by virtue of their age is “not relevant” for the forced marriage offence, and reiterated the UN Committee’s position in General comment no. 18 that child marriage is, by nature, a form of forced marriage. We therefore recommended that this narrow definition of ‘forced marriage’ in Scots law be subject to scrutiny, as it risks creating a false distinction between child marriage and forced marriage where such a difference does not exist in the context of young people under 18.

Recommendations

We made several further recommendations to Scottish Government regarding the policy development and implementation processes. We suggested that Scottish Government:

1. Coordinate more opportunities for direct engagement with children and young people and communities that may be disproportionately impacted by the proposals, to further understand and mitigate the impacts that such legislative reforms could bring to their lives,
2. Ensure that any new laws around the age of marriage and forced marriage offence are drafted within scope of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024, to ensure that children and young people have a clear and direct route to remedy if potential breaches of their rights arise, and
3. Ensure that any changes to the law are supported by robust measures to make sure they deliver practical change – including awareness raising, training for professionals, and strong monitoring and evaluation practices.

In summary, we called on Scottish Government to legislate to raise the legal age of marriage from 16 to 18 and to extend the forced marriage offence. These reforms, where supported by the necessary resources, capacity-building and child-friendly support to ensure that they deliver meaningful and sustainable progress, would help uphold children’s rights and help to fulfil Scottish Government’s ambition to make Scotland the best place in the world for children to grow up.

Ends

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