Have any of you issued a marriage licence?

June 30, 2015 9:25 PM

I'm asking this out of curiosity, not to be a jerk. I'm very curious about what county clerks do specifically to issue a marriage licence. I know this is a political hot potato--that's not what I'm asking about. I'd like to know the specific steps a county clerk takes to issue a marriage licence. Thank you in advance for any answers. See extended explanation

I'm a wanna be fiction writer working on a larger piece. It's set in Wisconsin, but I'm interested in any jurisdiction. I'd like to be as accurate as possible. It's fiction, but I like to take into account factual processes to make sure I'm being fair.

posted by gesamtkunstwerk to Law & Government (11 answers total)

For the application, the deputy clerk put us under oath, checked our ID, and typed our answers to the application boxes (maiden name, place of birth, etc) into the computer and printed out the completed form. We left and got married a couple weeks later. Our officiant signed the form and mailed it back to the clerk's office, and another deputy clerk recorded the document in the county's official records. This is in Florida.
posted by gatorae at 9:46 PM on June 30, 2015

We got legal married in Maryland.

Only one of us had to be present to apply for the license. She had to go up on Monday, give them $35 and our identifying information (name, social, address, marital status, and where we were born), and they issued the license. It was good at 6am on the second day after it was issued (so Wednesday).

We both went up Friday. We gave them $25 for the civil ceremony and the license. About 2 minutes with a clerk, and we were married.

I would like to note that at no point were any IDs checked. She went up with passports and birth certificates, and they didn't look at any of it. (Don't even ask us about the person in front of her in the license line who didn't know their intended's government name...)
posted by joycehealy at 10:14 PM on June 30, 2015

We inquired about the blank labeled "Relation" on the marriage license application, because we had no idea what it was asking. The clerk informed us that it was for filling out our relationship to each other.

Was in GA, but we've since been told that it's in a lot of states' marriage license applications.

A friend observed that the marriage license desk was right next to the handgun license desk. Also in GA.

...

The building had a number of not-very-busy state business desks; when The Spouse and I went to apply for a marriage license oh-so-many years ago, we were the only non-employees we saw while we found the right desk, inquired about procedure, filled out the forms (and paused to clarify "Relation"), handed the forms back to the clerk, collected the forms for the state-required blood test, and left the building.

Before they issued the license we had to go have the aforementioned blood test; I think the clinic sent verification of testing (possibly results?) back to the licensing office. Some details have gotten mangled in the memory. I also can't remember if I then picked up the license, or if it was mailed. Seems like it'd be a fairly major stressor if that had gotten lost in the mail.

Once it was issued we had 30 days to get someone to officiate our marriage & sign the license, and then send it back for processing. I was a little surprised by this--it was probably in the forms somewhere but I had not seen it, and when we inquired about the process, it wasn't mentioned. It was not a *problem*, I just hadn't been aware it was going to be valid for a limited time only. I had sort of expected it to be good for the next year, or something. I was lucky that the timing worked out, since I hadn't been aware that I needed to arrange for it to work out. If I had tried to take care of the paperwork farther in advance, we'd have had to do it over again.
posted by galadriel at 11:50 PM on June 30, 2015

In TN we showed our passports and filled out the forms, then the clerk typed them into the computer and printed us a licence. I don't remember being put under oath. I had my divorce papers with me in case they asked to see them, but the form just asked for the date of dissolution of any previous marriage and I wasn't asked for proof. The only other thing I remember noticing about the form was the box that asked about level of education.
posted by corvine at 3:24 AM on July 1, 2015

One thing I remember about getting a license in MA was that we had to state that we weren't related to one another in any of a listed number of ways (e.g. aunt & nephew).
posted by EtTuHealy at 4:01 AM on July 1, 2015

My grandmother did this for a living. The job is, as suggested by the title, a clerical job. As people have said above, the issuing clerk checks IDs, makes sure the forms are properly filled in, accepts and processes payment. In some places, the clerk asks a short series of questions of the person/people applying for the license. In some places, the clerk is called upon to explain rules of the license (e.g., it's only good for 6 months; you have to wait 72 hours before actually getting married). The clerk then fills in the actual license and hands it over to the person requesting it.

THEN the clerk (or a different clerk in the office) re-verifies the information on the form (searching for other marriages and divorces), registers the form with whatever data collection system the issuing governmental agency keeps. Later, after the marriage is solemnized by judge, justice of the peace or clergy, it is returned to the clerk. The clerk once again verifies that the form is filled in properly and enters the information into whatever data collection system the issuing municipality uses.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:02 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

In RI, we each needed original copies of our birth certificates.
posted by fancyoats at 6:02 AM on July 1, 2015

And in some places, the clerk will then mail a copy to the married couple after it's returned to the issuing office--not all places send a couple a copy of their license after it's been filed, as the only truly necessary record is the one with the Clerk of the Court. The clerk is also the person responsible for researching and producing copies of records of marriages upon proper request.

Actually, the Clerk of the Court does essentially this for all licenses and a bunch of other legal paperwork as well.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:05 AM on July 1, 2015

I got married in Las Vegas where we got half sheets of paper from the Clark County Courthouse (which was open til midnight) which we filled out with golf pencils. Other than stating that we were not related to each other (I think?) we also had to let them know how many times we'd been married before. It costs some money, not very much.

I now marry people in Vermont and walk them through the steps of getting a license (this is just the piece of paper, I do the ceremony. Town clerks can marry people as well). They have to go to the town clerk's office in their own town, if thee live in VT, or any town, if they're not from VT (in small town VT some of these towns have offices that are only open a few days or a few hours a day) and talk to Joyce. She gives them

- the license which they fill out with information about themselves and their parents (place of birth for parents, date and place of birth for them)
- an envelope to give me, the officiant, with the address of the town clerk (I mail this in after the ceremony). No stamp :)
- a printout piece of paper that explains all the rules for me, the officiant. I have to fill out the form and sign it (giving location and date/time of wedding and my authority to do this) and mail it in to the town clerk.

The town clerk then registers the wedding (types some stuff into an ancient computer to make sure it's all registered with the state and the town) and sends the couple back an official license. This piece of paper I get is amusing (I read it often) because it tells you what sort of ink to fill out the form with (black) and tells the couple to NOT sign the document themselves which I guess is a constant failure mode. They get their license usually within a week, mailed to them.

We're a pretty small town and the clerk doesn't do this that often so the process, while serious, is also not really that "assembly line" So I'm sure you know this, but this is so location specific (different rules for licenses from state to state and sometimes ... I think from county to county) that you'll want to make sure you have the details correct to the location you're in. For example in VT when civil unions were the law and some people were still objecting, a town clerk could refuse to issue a license but (after challenges to this) had to have an assistant town clerk who would issue the license for them.
posted by jessamyn at 6:36 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

In Wisconsin, couples must apply between 7 and 30 days before the marriage will be performed. (In-state couples must apply in county of residence; out-of-state couples must apply in the county they're going to be married in.)

The couple must apply together; they must have photo ID; they must bring a valid birth certificate and proof of address. If you've been divorced, you have to bring proof of the divorce, and you have to provide the officiant's information. If either the bride or groom doesn't speak English, you must bring a translator -- the couple may not translate for each other (to make it harder for you to "buy" a spouse from overseas who does not actually want to marry you). You pay your fee (typically surprisingly high!).

In a large county, there may be a dedicated "marriage licenses" line. In a smaller county, there's probably just a "county clerk" line where everyone's in line together. When you drop by the county clerk's office, there may be people there seeking birth certificates, death certificates, liquor licenses, notary public commissions, or filing election paperwork, economic statements, property tax disputes, or business filings. In my medium-sized county, there's one line for election-type paperwork, one line for vital records, and one line for property-tax stuff and business stuff together. There's usually just one or two people there, so there's not so much a LINE (and generally one employee floats among the desks; on busy days, like property tax deadlines or election filing deadlines, there are more people).

So typically the clerk checks your paperwork and supporting documentation, and then they will key in the information to the computer (possibly while you go sit nearby and wait for your name to be called; in some states you turn it in and get your license by mail a week later). Then they'll print out your paperwork and use the big heavy seal to emboss it and hand it to you, generally with a cover sheet of instructions, and run through their quick spiel on "This license becomes valid in 7 days and expires after 30 day, you must have a minister/official who meets these qualifications, they must sign it and mail it back to the clerk for it to be recorded ..."

The computer systems are typically a bit outdated and slow ... not like airline reservation outdated, but there's a lot of keying in a burst of characters, clicking, and then waiting for the computer to think about it for a while before the next screen comes up. Clerk's offices are mostly vastly overworked and underfunded and they have to deal with a large number of different types of documents, so they're not generally very chatty ... they just want to get the computer to spit out your document as fast as possible.

It would be pretty trivial to drop by a county clerk's office near your home and watch it in action for an hour ... go apply for a certified copy of some document of your own if you feel weird about it. (In fact, if you call ahead and say you're interested in seeing how the office works, for fiction you're writing, I'd say there's a 75% chance they'd invite you to come observe during a slow period ... it's a public office, nothing going on is secret!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:11 AM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

According to this, a few jurisdictions still require pre-marital blood tests. The first time I got married, we had to give the clerk our blood test reports in order to get the license.
posted by JimN2TAW at 12:47 PM on July 1, 2015