According to data from the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN), the number of marriages in which one of the people is a minor, aged between 16 and 18, has increased consecutively over the last five years and reached 227 in 2024. In the first three months of 2025, there were 65.
Between 2020 and 2024, the number of marriages with minors increased by 187%. After 2020, 79 marriages were registered, one of the low figures, possibly explained by the closure of a large part of public services with face-to-face attendance following the COVID-19 pandemic.
After 2020, the number of marriages involving minors increased every year, from 130 in 2021, to 158 in 2022, 178 in 2023 and 227 in 2024. The increase between these last two years is almost 30%.
The IRN data sent to the Lusa news agency shows a strong preponderance of marriages in which one of the elements was between 16 and 18 years old, representing 74.3% (705) of the 940 people involved in the 470 marriages in question between 2023 and the first three months of 2025.
Most of the teenagers were female (65%), a trend that continues across all three ages, with 317 girls marrying at 16, another 127 marrying when they were 17 and a further 15 at 18.
There were 25 marriages in which one of the people was 25 or over, and six adults aged 30 or over married young people aged 16 or 17.
In these marriages with minors, the oldest adult is 35, male, of Portuguese nationality, and married a girl aged 17. There is also a record of a 32-year-old man who married a 17-year-old girl, and two 31-year-old men, both of whom married 17-year-old girls.
There are records of two women in their 30s who married, one a 16-year-old, the other a 17-year-old, and two more men in their 30s who married two girls, one 16 and the other 17.
Most of the adults who married minors were Portuguese nationals, but there were also Moroccans, Algerians, and Brazilians.
Concerning the total of 470 marriages with minors celebrated between 2023 and the first three months of 2025, the distribution by district shows that Aveiro comes first (78), followed by Beja (73), Porto (59), Faro (46), Braga (29), and Lisbon (29).
Since 2 April, marriages with children under the age of 18 have been banned, and child, early or forced marriage is now included among the situations of danger that legitimise intervention to promote the rights and protection of children and young people in danger.
The president promulgated the decree on 24 March, after Parliament raised the minimum age for a young person to marry to 18 at the end of February and removed the reference to emancipation from several articles of the legislation.
The decree was voted on in parliament on 20 February and approved, with the PSD, IL, and CDS-PP voting against it. It results from bills by the Left Bloc (BE) and the People-Animals-Nature party (PAN), which were approved in general on 31 January in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees.
