When are you really married?

Factual Questions
1

Tragic story over the weekend about a man who just got married hours prior, pulling over to help someone else with car problems and both getting hit by traffic and dying. The groom was also a veteran.

Since the paperwork had not yet been received by the county and approved/registered with the state, would the bride-turned-widow be eligible for any sort of spousal benefits? I remember a Cecil column about getting married saying that it was after the paperwork was received that you were actually married. On the other hand, there’s no legitimate question that they both committed at the ceremony and presumably signed the paperwork immediately after.

Obviously the last thing on her mind but I was curious about the mechanics of it.

2

The paperwork must be submitted within 30 days in most, if not all states. But the effective date is the date of the ceremony. So if you get your license on Dec 1, stand in front of me and exchange views and I sign your license on Dec 10 and then I mail it in on Dec. 13, your marriage date is Dec 10th, and that’s what will be on your marriage certificate.

3

Varies from State to State. In most places it’s a two step process. Step one, you get a marriage license, typically from a county court house. The license allows you to get married, and usually expires in some window of time like 30-60 days.

Once you have a marriage license, you also get some additional paperwork (we’ll call it a marriage certificate as that is the common term.) When you then have your marriage ceremony, the person who officiates the ceremony signs the certificate. Technically in many States the moment the ceremony has been concluded you are legally married, but the signature also needs to happen. The person who officiates can typically be just about anyone, States have different requirements for who can officiate but most mainstream religious officiants are legal officiants as are many people who choose to go through the minimal process involved to get certified as a Pastor of the “Universal Life Church” or some other such thing.

There are also civil officiants, for those who do not want to do a ceremony of their own and want to use civil facilities. These individuals are sometimes available right where you get your license, but often you need to schedule time with them or they may work in a different building.

Anyway, in most States once the ceremony is performed and the officiant has signed the certificate, you’re legally married. However, in most States if you want legal certification (and a “real” marriage certificate) that documentation needs to be mailed in / delivered to the State in a fairly short period of time. If you miss this step, you are technically legally married, but you won’t have a valid certificate.

This can actually get in the way of receiving Social Security Survivor Benefits and other things.

One example I’m aware of, a couple got married in the 60s at their church, the officiant signed the document but never mailed it in. Many years later, when they were doing estate planning they realized they needed a genuine marriage certificate (they just had the paperwork from their license/ceremony.) When they requested the certificate, they found out that none was on file. So as far as the State knew, they had never been married.

How that gets resolved varies from State to State, but in this couple’s case, they were able to go to the church they were married at (35-40 years after the fact) and they still had the original document on file. That, along with two witnesses who were physically present at the original ceremony, could certify that the marriage indeed happened back when they say it did. The State then issued a certificate dated back to when their ceremony was actually held in the 1960s.

So most likely the case in the OP here, they already had their ceremony so they are actually married. The officiant can mail the paper work in and the widow will be entitled to full rights as a surviving spouse.

4

It does, as Martin points out, depend on the law of the place where the marriage is celebrated.

Historically, in both common law and civil law traditions, it was the exchange of vows between the couple which constituted the marriage. The subsequent signing of registers and certificates, sending of papers to state officials, etc, was basically record-keeping. In time the church, and then the state, came to take this record-keeping very seriously and started to impose obligations. But, even then, if you failed to send in the paperwork you were supposed to, you might have committed the offence of failing to register a marriage, but it had no implications for the validity of the marriage. The only reason you had an obligation to send in the paperwork was because the couple were, in fact, married. If they weren’t, then there was no marriage to register, and consequently you couldn’t be in breach of a law requiring the registration of marriages.

Conceptually, the way to think of this is to put the registration of marriages along with the registration of births and deaths. If you fail to register any of these things you may be in trouble, but they have all still happened.

That’s not to say that in a particular jurisdiction they couldn’t have amended the law further, to say that until you complete some documentation you are not married; it’s the documentation that constitutes the marriage, and any ceremony you have involving spoken vows, etc , has no legal significance. But off the top of my head I’m not aware of any jurisdiction which has done that.

What many jurisdictions have done is to impose a prior documentation obligation; you have to give notice in advance of your intention to marry, and/or obtain a licence to marry, and if you haven’t done this then any marriage ceremony you go through is not legally effective (and may in addition be an offence). But, again, in these cases it’s still the ceremony with the exchange of vows which marries you; complying with the advance documentary requirements does not, in itself, result in your being married.

5

We’ve all said some variation of, “it depends which state,” but…does it? Does anyone know of a state where the marriage date is not the date of the signing of something - which overwhelmingly happens on the day of the ceremony?

That is, I suppose, one important caveat. It’s the **signing **that’s legal, not the saying. For most church weddings, they will not proceed with the ceremony without the license being shown to the officiant the day of. I know my brother-in-law forgot theirs, and someone had to run to the hotel to pick it up while we all made nervous small talk, because the Priest would not begin without it.

I’m a bit more lenient (theoretically, so far everyone I’ve married has remembered their license) - I’d tell the couple that we could proceed with the ceremony, but that the ceremony would not be legally binding, and that they would have to bring me the license before they’d be legally married. If that happened the same day as the ceremony, then that would be the date of the marriage. If they couldn’t get it to me until next week, then they’re going to have twice the anniversaries to remember, because the legal married-on date is the date I sign the license, not the date they spoke the words.

That’s exactly how it is in every state in the US that I know of. You can have all the *ceremonies *you want, and you’re not married. You’re only married once you’ve gone through whatever paperwork the state has set up, and the married on date is the date the officiant made you official. MOST of the ceremonies I do are not legally binding weddings, because they tend to involve gay people (who may not be legally married in my state until June, with a few court ordered exceptions) or people who don’t want to be legally married but want to announce and celebrate a special bond with their communities. I can do legal or symbolic weddings - the difference is that they go in different record books in my keeping (technically, all I have to record are the legal ones, but I keep another book for the symbolic ones) and for the symbolic ones, I don’t sign a license and mail it in to the state.

6

Actually, it may not be quite as straightforward as that.

Your profile says you’re in “ChigagObama”, so I had a quick look at the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act: 750 ILCS 5/ Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act.

In large measure, it confirms what you say. Sec. 201: “A marriage between 2 persons licensed, solemnized and registered as provided in this Act is valid in this State.” So it seems as though all three steps are required for validity.

Licensing is something the couple attend to before the ceremony. We know that.

Solemnisation is the ceremony. Under sec. 209, leaving aside for a moment marriages before judges and county clerks and so forth, solemnisation can be “in accordance with the prescriptions of any religious denomination, Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group, provided that when such prescriptions require an officiant, the officiant be in good standing with his or her religious denomination, Indian Nation or Tribe or Native Group.” For good “free exercise” reasons, the state makes no attempt to regulate how religious denominations, etc, conduct their marriage ceremonies; that’s a matter for them. There’s no requirement that signing any document should form part of the ceremony.

But there is a subsequent paperwork requirement. Within ten days after the solemnisation, either the officiant or the couple themselves must sign a marriage certificate form and forward it to the county clerk.

Finally, registration. Signing the certificate and forwarding it to the clerk is not registration. Under sec. 210, registration is what the clerk does after he receives the certificate.

So, three points from all this.

First, under Illinois law, registration apparent is required for a valid marriage.

Secondly, the officiant (or the couple) signing the paperwork, and sending or delivering it to the county clerk is not registration. Registration is what the clerk does with the paperwork he receives. Presumably, he enters the details from the marriage certificate from supplied to him into a register. Presumably also, depending on the flow of work within the office, that could happen some time after the paperwork is received at the office.

Thirdly, and most interestingly of all, one of the details set out in s. 210 the clerk has to register is “the date and place of the marriage”. Now, if registration is the necessary final step for their to be a valid marriage, there’s no marriage until the registration is complete, and therefore the date the clerk should enter as the date of the marriage is today’s date; i.e. the date he is making the entry in the register. Similarly the place where the marriage is completed is the county clerk’s own office, because that’s where registration takes place. But I’ll give you 20-to-1 on that, in fact, the date and place entered in the register is the date and place of solemnisation, not the date and place of registration. Notwithstanding that registration is required for validity, the marriage is in fact regarded as having taken place when solemnised.

There’s no case for saying, I think, that the date of the marriage is the date the officiant signed the paperwork. That will normally be the date of solemnisation, but if for some reason he doesn’t sign it for a couple of days, his signing it is neither solemnisation nor registration one of the three essential steps for validity of marriage.

I wouldn’t assume that other states have followed Illinois in making registration a requirement for validity. FWIW this site: http://www.usmarriagelaws.com/, attempting a broad summary of US laws, says:

“The person who performs the marriage ceremony has a duty to send a copy of the marriage certificate to the county or state agency that records marriage certificates. Failure to send the marriage certificate to the appropriate agency does not necessarily nullify the marriage, but it may make proof of the marriage more difficult.”

In general, in the common law world there’s a current in public policy which says that people’s status should be aligned with what that they think it is. If a couple have been through a marriage ceremony and consider themselves married and are considered married by their family and friends then probably the state ought to consider them married too, unless there is some compelling public interest against that. Ohio, to pick a state at random, imposes requirement on the officiant to send a marriage certificate to the probate judge within thirty days of solemnisation, and makes failure to do so a misdemeanour which attracts a penalty, but there is no provision saying that the marriage is invalid if this is not done.

7

If a woman needs a passport bearing her married name, in order to leave immediately on her honeymoon, the US State Department will provide a new passport in the new name to the person officiating the ceremony, to be handed over to the bride as soon as the bride and groom say “I do” and are declared man and wife"…

That seems to be good enough for the Passport Office at the Department of State, who are pretty fussy about things like that.

8

It does occur to me that, if Illinois law makes registration an essential requirement for a valid marriage, then in the scenario described in the OP the couple are indeed not married - not just for spousal benefits, etc, but also for inheritance purposes.

And I struggle to believe that that’s the case.

9

In Aus, and even more so in NZ, a wedding is only one of the paths to a state-sanctioned marriage. If you have kids, you’re married. It’s not normally called mariage, and it won’t get you a passport, but pretty much everything else is the same. Over (mostly) the last 10 years, the Fed’s have gone over all the federal law, and there is very little left that hangs on if you had a wedding, or if you registered your wedding, or if you were both blokes or both sheilas.

It’s an interesting return to pre-state-involvement marriage ideas. In my religous tradition, marriage is something you do, not something you have done to you. In other religous traditions, even if marriage is something you have done to you, you aren’t married unless you’ve had sex (and if you’ve had a wedding, you can get it annulled).

There’s a lot of English history where the “promise of marriage” was something you did privately, to get your girl to say yes. Public Wedding cermony and registration only followed when children did, and not necessarily immediately: any children acknowledged / brought with you to the wedding were children of the marriage.

10

Actually, there’s still one very important difference.

If you and I marry, Melbourne, then neither of us is free to marry someone else without first getting a divorce. But if you and I form a de facto relationship, we’re still free to marry. And if, for example, I do marry, my new spouse comes in ahead of you as regards things like inheritance rights, etc, so your position can be seriously disadvantaged.

Which means that, if I haven’t married, your position is still not the same as if you were my spouse, because it’s provisional and contingent in a way that it would not be, were we actually married.

(As regards getting a passport, though, it’s pretty much the same as marriage. As the de facto partner of an Australian citizen, you can get permanent residence, and you come to Australia, stay here for long enough and keep you nose clean, you can be naturalised, and get an Australian passport. And that’s pretty much the same as it is for the spouse of an Australian citizen.)

11

Marriage is definitely not about being the most perfect and selfless person in the world. Marriage just might not be for you, and it’s time to accept that about yourself.
This isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s more than OK if you don’t feel like getting married ever.
Maybe you leave your dirty socks all over the place and you don’t want to subject another human to that life forever. Maybe you just don’t want to be tied to one person for the rest of your life.

12

We got married on New Year’s Eve, so we definitely looked into the legalities of when exactly we were married. In Indiana, it’s basically whenever the officiant says you were married.

13

I would agree with Munch. I have never heard of the IRS disallowing someone from Illinois to file their taxes as “married filing jointly”, if they had their wedding ceremony on December 31st, but their paperwork wasn’t “registered” for a few weeks later.

14

Yeah - to flesh that out a bit, that’s exactly what we did. We got married 12/31/12 and obviously were not able to file the paperwork until a few days later, in 2013. We actually called up the IRS to ask them if we could file jointly for 2012, and they agreed. Applying for the marriage certificate was the crucial step (along with the ceremony - or at least an officiant’s signature), not the filing afterwards.

15

Yes, I think that if the marriage were otherwise legitimate (e.g. not between siblings), the courts would probably try to find a way to hold it valid.

Here is an article from the Illinois Legal Aid Society which seems to agree:

If My Marriage License was Never Registered Do I Have to File for Divorce?.

16

When you start farting in front of each other.

17

The OP was relating a news story he heard, there’s not actually any direct indication it happened in Illinois just because the OP lives there.

18

We legally registered our marriage at a district office in Bangkok late one April. This made us married in the eyes of both Thai and American law. But her family did not consider us married until the religious ceremony, which my mother-in-law determined in consultation with a fortune teller should be in mid-June. So we couldn’t live together until then despite my wife being in her 30s.

19

I’m pretty sure that the mother-in-law clause, trumps all other jurisdictions.

20

The birth date of a child is obviously the date of the fact, not some amorphous date when officials get around to filing the information. Logically, a marriage would be subject to the same reasoning.

The original certificate of my birth was filed with the state department of health on December 12, and it states that I was born on November 26. My date of birth is not in dispute – it is November 26.