CCTV News: According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the State Council Executive Meeting recently reviewed and passed the "Regulations on Marriage Registration (Revised Draft)" and "Regulations" to implement the relevant provisions of the Civil Code, and has raised the results of reform pilot projects such as "cross-provincial handling" of marriage registration in recent years into a legal system. It is of great significance to standardize marriage registration work, optimize marriage registration services, protect the legitimate rights and interests of marriage parties, strengthen marriage and family construction, and promote social harmony and stability, and provides important legal guarantees for doing a good job in marriage management in the new era.
In order to effectively implement the "Regulations", the Ministry of Civil Affairs will focus on the following tasks.
1. Implement the "National Service" for Marriage Registration
In order to meet the people's needs for marriage registration in other places, with the approval of the State Council, since June 2021, 21 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) across the country have carried out two rounds of "cross-provincial service" pilot projects. As of the end of February 2025, a total of 492,000 marriage registrations have been handled nationwide, and related work has been widely praised by the society. In order to better respond to the demands of the masses, on the basis of fully summarizing the successful experience of the pilot, the marriage registration will be implemented. At that time, the parties will no longer be subject to the location of permanent residence.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs will guide all localities to continuously strengthen standardized construction and clarify acceptance conditions, processing procedures and document materials requirements. The marriage registration authority must carefully verify whether the certificate materials provided by the parties are authentic and complete, and whether they meet the statutory requirements, and strictly handle the registration business in accordance with the law. Urge localities to strengthen institutional construction, improve relevant marriage registration work standards, clarify service standards, work discipline, civilized language, and service prohibited language at the marriage registration window, and fully demonstrate the good image of the government departments. Guide and strengthen information construction, actively provide marriage registration appointment services, carry out in-depth online verification of marriage registration information data, and make more convenient and benefit the people by allowing data to run more and the people to run less.
2. Optimize marriage and family counseling services
Urge local marriage registration agencies to strengthen comprehensive marriage and family counseling services, and strive to provide parties with more scientific, professional, effective and warm marriage and family counseling services through various methods. At the same time, we support local governments to adhere to classified policies, focus on pre-marital education, marriage and family relationship counseling and other services, and clarify the content, counseling strategies, and counseling priorities in a targeted manner, and provide emotional communication, psychological counseling, dispute mediation and other services to the parties. Guide all localities to continue to inherit good family traditions and tutoring, make good use of the good opportunities of marriage and family counseling services, vigorously promote the core socialist values, and actively inherit the excellent traditional Chinese culture.
3. Continue to deepen the reform of marriage customs
Guiding civil affairs departments at all levels to advocate civilized and healthy wedding customs, actively provide special services such as marriage certificate issuance ceremony, collective wedding ceremony, and guide more young groups to handle newly and simple weddings. Cooperate with relevant departments to carry out solid governance of bad habits such as high-value bride gifts and large-scale celebrations, give full play to the role of party members and cadres as well as grassroots organizations such as the Red and White Council, mobilize social forces to participate in the reform of marriage customs, and effectively curb unhealthy customs in the field of marriage customs.
4. Build and improve the integrity system of marriage management
The Ministry of Civil Affairs will work with the national development and reform departments to promote the establishment of a integrity system for marriage registration. The parties to the marriage registration must be responsible for the authenticity and validity of the certificate materials provided by individuals and shall not issue false certificate materials.
