Marriage licenses and registers are deemed by many as the two most important types of marriage records because of the data they provide and the various purposes they serve.

A marriage license is a permit provided by a US state to citizens with the intention to marry each other. A marriage license would usually include information like the couple’s names, birth dates, addresses, races, occupations, and data about their parents. Marriage licenses are fairly easy to obtain and come with an expiration date.

A marriage register is kept by the same clerk who had issued the couple’s marriage license. It is signed by the couples, witnesses, and officials. It contains the couple’s name, date and place of marriage, as well as the name of the marriage official.

Other types of marriage records are the marriage certificate itself, consent affidavits, and marriage banns. Marriage records in general prove that the marriage did take place and offspring born subsequent to the marriage are all legitimate.

Marriage records are also vital for women wishing to legally and officially change their maiden names in order to take their husbands’ surnames. They may also serve as legal proof of identification for people who had lost their birth records. Adopted or illegitimate children may also use marriage records to trace their birth parents.

If you are harboring any doubts about your partner, the presence or absence of marriage records would let you know if your partner is at least legally unable to marry you or not respectively. They are also very useful in tracing your ancestry or lineage in general.

Marriage records are often requested by insurance companies to prove the insurer’s civil status. A conservative school may also ask for them to help them further evaluate the suitability of your child to the school environment and possibly determine the student’s psychological condition.

Searching for marriage records is not as difficult as most people think because they are public records in general. For instance, last August 6, 2007 a lifestyle article in the Press Connects website detailed the writer’s journey as she tried tracing the sender of an unstamped letter dated 1842 by using old marriage records kept by the library. But this is largely due to the data already made available in the Internet and the sophisticated record-keeping technology used by the government to keep track of public records.

All in all, marriage records can do a lot of help…if and only when they do exist.

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