Monday, February 3, 2014

California Free Marriage Records

By Ben Kingsley


The California Health Department keeps records of California Marriage Records. However, they are not permitted by the court to provide certified marriage records to the public because that task is given to the exact county Clerk of Court that finalized the marriage. It is essential that a marriage is documented because they support the validity of a marriage, they contain the original last name of the bride, and they can also be used to trace the family tree of a person.

Any member of the public has the right marriage records because they are part of what are considered as public records. However, the full details the records are only given to the husband, the wife, their legal representatives, and other people that are specified by the court. If outside parties want to access the records, they need the consent of the couple to do so. They will be provided with marriage certificates which are only good as a source of information and not as a legal document to support any legal matters.

A marriage certificate contains the basic pieces of information regarding a particular marriage such as the name of the husband and the wife, their birth date, birth place, the place where the marriage occurred, and the likes. It is the right of the husband and the wife to keep private the other details of their marriage.

Public offices that store public documents run their own official websites. The documents are encoded and inserted into a database. Despite running their own websites, public offices still take awhile to process transactions because they are short in employees. Thankfully, the court permits some online search tools to also make the documents available to the public upon request. The documents that you get from the official websites of public offices are identical to what you will get from online search tools.

Online service providers are either for free or they impose certain fees. Both types are capable of supplying the basic details of a marriage files except those that impose certain fees provide more information each time as long as they are available. There is also an option for you to become a member by paying a one-time membership fee. Once a member, you can do as many searches as you wish. If you are searching for only one file and maybe a few more, you may just pay for every file that you search and not register as a member anymore.

It is important to check if a marriage record has a Marriage License included in it. Without a license, a marriage will not be considered as valid even if a ceremony was carried out. A county Clerk of Court is the public agency in-charge of granting a license. Once a licensed is issued, it will only be effective for 90 days. Once it surpasses that period of time, the license becomes useless and the husband and the wife needs to apply for another one. If a person has been married in the past, a divorce record is required for a license application to be accepted.




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