Pascale and Michael were together for six and half years, and were initially due to get married in June 2012. She only identified herself as Pascale, according to The Huffington Post, and only one month before the couple was to be wed, her partner Michael suffered a heart attack and died. Pascale told France Television this week, “Although he is gone, he is still my man.”
It has been reported that Pascale has been granted her longstanding wish by France’s head of state, permission by the French President to marry her former partner Michael posthumously. A posthumous marriage is a marriage in which one of the participating members is deceased. The marriage is possible because of one of France’s little known laws. The law allows someone to marry a dead person in special circumstances. Pascale, after writing four letters to the President and waiting 20 weeks, has been given permission to marry her dead boyfriend at a ceremony in her village in St. Omer, France.
In 2011 President Nicolas Sarkozy granted 22 year old Karen Jumeaux of France permission to wed fiancé Anthony Maillot – almost two years after he was killed in a road accident, according to the Daily Mail UK. And back in 2009, 26-year-old Magali Jaskiewicz, a French woman whose fiancé asked her to marry him two days before he was killed in a car crash, was granted a posthumous white wedding in their village.
Posthumous marriage is legal in France and similar forms are practiced in Sudan as well as in China. Since World War I, France has had hundreds of requests each year for posthumous marriages, of which many have been accepted.
Anyone in France who wants to file for posthumous marriage can send a request to the President of France, who then forwards it to the Justice Minister, who forwards it to the prosecutor for the surviving member’s district. If the couple had originally planned on getting married and the family of the deceased approves, the prosecutor then sends the application back to the President.
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