Do nations automatically recognize marriages in other countires? Even when the marriages involve their own citizens?
The light of my life is from Indonesia. Like many countries, Indonesia does not have civil ceremonies – all weddings must be religious ceremonies. According to some sources, Indonesia does not permit inter-faith marriages either. (Other sources disagree. The Web is a wonderful research tool, but it does have its limits.) This presents certain challenges to us.
If my love and I were to wed here in the States, would other countries recognize our union? (There is no urgency to this question – no bells ringing in the near future – but an answer would help us plan our lives.)
I respectfully request that we keep WAGs to a minimum – I’m looking for real info here. Please feel free to offer WAGs to any of my other threads, where they are most welcome.
Also, please note that I’m not looking for info on citizenship, green cards, visas, etc. We are well-versed on those issues.
I don’t know much on this subject, but I can speak authoritatively on one circumstance with thanks from People Magazine.
Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall were married in Bali in 1991-ish. Fast forward to last year, Jerry wants to divorce him and Mick’s lawyer finds a loop hole stating that marriages in Bali are not valid in the eyes of British law. This saves Mick a truck load of cash.
The best thing to do is check with the consulate for the US and your honey about the rules. Hell, skip that. Just get married in Vegas by an Elvis Impersonator. Indonesian courts will be in awe over such a celebrity overseeing your nuptials.
I can tell you just about everything you need to know on this subject. I am currently in the middle of the very long, expensive and frustrating process of trying to get a fiance visa for my foriegn SO.
To answer what you’ve already asked, yes, the marriage is recognized by other countries. Well, more or less. The thing is, it doesn’t need to be recognized outside of the country you live in. When one travels, the only relevant fact is one’s citizenship, not their marital status. The only time you would need to be concerned about your marriage being recognized as legit in a foriegn country would be if you intended to live there.
If your relationship does progress to the point that you are considering marriage, you will be better off to marry in the U.S. She will have to get a fiance visa, which is no picnic, but it is still a simpler and faster process than getting a spousal visa.
I’ll be happy to give you any information you want, but I’ll wait till you ask specific questions because, frankly, I could write a frickin’ thesis about this miserable process.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
Lucky, is there really such a thing as a fiance visa? I always assumed that it would be better to get married abroad before going back to the US; I wouldn’t want to run the risk of my SO coming to the US on a tourist visa, getting married here, and then being “expeditiously removed” by the INS for misstating her intentions in travelling to the [irony]Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave[/irony].
Yes, living in Indonesia is a distinct possibility, hence my concern.
Doghouse Reilly –
Yes, there really is such a thing as a fiance visa. And Lucky is correct – they are a major pain in the butt.
Both –
The lawyers I have spoken to say the best bet is to get your sweetie here on a work or student visa. If you then marry, changing the status of one of these visas is a simpler (though not a simple) process. INS scrutinizes fiance visas, since these are ripe for abuse (a sham marriage to allow someone into the country who wouldn’t otherwise qualify). If your SO has a work or student visa, then INS assumes they had a legitimate reason to be here in the first place.
This most emphatically does NOT apply to tourist visas.
I’m not familiar with a spouse visa. A friend of mine did the “get married abroad” thing, and her hubby was not allowed in the country, until they could get a work visa. Once here, they had the status changed.
HOWEVER, this is all a little OT. My concern remains – if we were to wed here and move abroad, would other countries recognize the marriage? Yes, I guess going to an embassy/consulate would be the best way, but I’m trying to do what research I can without alerting the authorities.
I wish I could give you a more definate answer, but here’s all I’ve got:
I have never heard of a situation in which one country failed to recognize a marriage which took place in another country. My educated guess for this would be because the conulates of both countries are involved in the marriage process. What I mean is that even if your SO were here on a work or student visa, when you decided to marry, you would have to file forms with the INS. These forms would no doubt include some sort of “Free to Marry” documentation—same as with a finace visa—wherein both nations must agree that the two people in question are legally freee to marry each other. In light of that, it would seem very odd for a country to approve the proposed marriage but then refuse to recognize it.
Dag; As Beraung said, yes there is a finace visa. This type of visa allows the engaged person to come to the US, but they must marry the American within 90 days of arrival or be deported. While I understand the neccessity of this, it makes it really difficult when marrying a Third World person. In my finace’s case, he can not get a tourist visa. Period. A tourist visa is only granted if one can prove that they intend to return to their native country and not illegally immigrate. It is virtually impossible to prove this by INS standards. Basically, one would have to be very rich with a lot of non-liquid assetts. So, while I would have really liked for him to be able to come to the US and at least see the place before he decides if he wants to marry an American, that is not possible.
So, we began the finace visa application process. We have been working on it for 10 months now with no end in sight. Granted, there are a couple of special circumstanses in our case, but it always takes a long time. I’ve never applied for a spousal visa, but my understanding is that if one marries abroad, one must first return to the US (alone) and then apply for a visa to bring the spouse. A couple of different lawyers have told me that one can expect that process to take at least a year.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
I bow to your first-hand experience, but I had not previously heard of a tourist visa being denied for financial reasons. Surely, with hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists visiting the US each year, obtaining a proper visas can’t be all that hard, though I imagine there may be a background check that could hold things up. Tourist visas of course are only good for a limited time (30 days, I think), after which one must return home. If your SO gets married while in the States on a tourist visa, he must still return to his country of origin and apply for immigration as a spouse, a process that can indeed take a year. (I believe a lawyer once told me that once the immigration process begins, he cannot visit the US. Bureaucrats – go figure.)
I’m happy to add my own experience, FWIW. My husband, who is German, and I were married in America and then I moved over to Germany a month later. The pre-marriage paperwork was utterly basic – all we needed was a marriage license, which took 15 minutes and $30. We had to register the marriage in Germany, and the only non-routine matter was that I had retained my maiden name as a middle name, which is Not Allowed under German name law.
I mention this not because it has any relevance whatsoever to the topic at hand, but to vent once more my frustration at being told by this smug little German worm in a Hawaiian shirt that Americans don’t even write out their middle names, but rather indicate them with an initial and a period, as in the example John “F.” Kennedy. I would have loved to enter a discussion on the difference of one’s legal name as opposed to how one writes it familiarly, but I didn’t speak the language then, and he had the power to approve the name that I had chosen and that was indicated on my driver’s licence, my Social Security card, and my passport, with a wave of his little worm hand, and I was trying to stay on his good side.
Back on topic, we didn’t even deal with INS, but of course we weren’t planning on living in the States. It may also have made a difference that the foreign country involved was Germany.
Sorry, how did I leave out the point of all that? What I wanted to emphasize is that having our marriage recognized in Germany was strictly a matter of providing the documents to prove that our marriage had taken place according to the laws of the state in which we were married. Germany automatically accepts valid American weddings; the question here is whether Indonesia does the same.
If you are leery of contacting the Indonesian Embassy yourself, how about having a friend doing it without mentioning either your name or that of your fiance?
I hopped over to the State Department . It looks like you may want to get your marriage license authenticated before you go. Because Indonesia is not a signatory to the Hague Legalization Convention, you can’t use the (relatively) simple process that shantih used in Germany. Instead, you have to engage in a lengthy PITA called “chain authentication.” You can find some basic info at the State Department’s Traveler’s Guide on Authentication of Documents for Use Abroad . If for some reason, you don’t want to “ping” the State Dept., let me know and I’ll Copy and Paste the relevant section.
Lucky, my US friends’ got married in Mexico. They said when then got back, the US did not recognize that as a marriage.
Most of this stuff depends on what country you are in as laws do vary from country to country.
I read the newsgroup, alt.visa.marriage-based a lot, they can answer questions about any country there because they have a huge world-wide readership.
Right now some creep from England, still married there BTW, got a job with a company here but he can’t get paid until he gets a SS number [takes some time]. Then, I don’t know what his plans are but hes proposed to an american woman already. Lucky, it just seems to be unfair & going much faster than that legal fiance visa process that you are going thru. But I have heard other stories like yours & it does take almost a year your way.
I don’t know much about the international recognition of marriages, so would defer to the learned comments already made.
However, this statement set off an alarm bell:
In some countries, inheritance laws are tied very closely to marital status, and the ability of the testator to leave property away from the family is limited.
So, if a citizen of such a country moves abroad and marries, and then his/her parents or relatives dies, the status of the marriage may be very important for testamentary purposes.
If the home country does not recognize the foreign marriage, the individual’s testamentary rights may be affected. It may also affect the inheritance rights of any children of the marriage, since many countries still make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. Whether this is the case for Indonesia, I could not say, but you may wish to look into this point.
I was once involved in getting a package together for a client to prove to the Belgian government that the client was lawfully married to a Canadian citizen. It was a great rush, because a family member was about to undergo serious surgery, and the family didn’t want any uncertainty about our client’s marital status.
If they were both U.S. citizens, then the U.S. would not recognize the marriage which took place abroad. If one person is American and the other foriegn, they can still get married on foriegn soil with little hassle, but the marriage won’t be legal. Anyone can hire the local shaman to marry them, but that doesn’t mean the U.S. will recognize the marriage. In order to legally marry abroad, one must have permission from their consulate. I have never done this so I can’t testify to the specifics, but it would seem to me that if the U.S. consulate gives the marriage the OK, then the U.S. would recognize the marriage (provided all paperwork is filed in triplicate with the accompanying fees ;))
Beraung;
The problem with the tourist visa is that my fiance is from Nepal, a Third World country. I’m not sure how the U.S. feels about Indonesia, but you may run into the same problem. Anyone seeking a visa from a T.W. country is assumed to be intending to illegally immigrate and they must prove otherwise by showing that they have sufficient financial and social ties to their home country (the embassy told me this flat out). Sounds simple enough, but my finace owns two companies in Nepal, employs 11 people, owns 2 houses, holds various bank accounts and ALL of his family lives in Nepal. They told him this was not good enough, but would not tell him exactly what would make him qualify. I thought it was grossly unfair and tried my best to get them to reconsider, but as you probably know, the consulate answers to no one and there is no means to appeal a decision.
jti;
Excellent point about inheritance rights. I hadn’t considered that. Still, however, in order to legally marry a forienger, both consulates are involved in the process. It seems aufully silly to me that the consulates would approve the marriage, but then the state wouldn’t recognize it. Still, we are takling about government here, so I suppose anything is possible.
manhatten;
Thanks for being the voice of reason and actually going to the appropriate source
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
Duration of tourist visas may vary depending on the country the person is coming from, but from Nepal, a tourist visa is good for a 6 month stay in the U.S. If you can get one, that is.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
Lucky, isn’t there a certain number of visas given each year? By now they must have all been given out for this year?
Also, Im pretty sure that if you are a foreign citizen and you get a job in the US that you still have to pay taxes on that income to your old country…Enlgand has such a deal with the US on that & they have ways so you get credit for US taxes on your BRit ones.
Certain types of visa are limited in number and others are not. If you want to know which ones and how many, go to the INS website.
Taxation laws vary from country to country, but generally, you must pay taxes to your country of citizenship, regardless of your country of residence.
“I should not take bribes and Minister Bal Bahadur KC should not do so either. But if clerks take a bribe of Rs 50-60 after a hard day’s work, it is not an issue.” ----Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, Current Prime Minister of Nepal
