Georgia Free Marriage Records

By Claire Dowell


The State of Georgia started to maintain marriage records since 1805 under their Probate Court. The court is the office in-charge of accepting and making marriage applications official. In 1952, the Vital Records office began to also maintain Georgia Marriage Records. However, they only have records of marriages that occurred until 1996.

A request can be made by completing a request form which can be acquired from the Vital Records office or can be downloaded from their website. Fields that need to be supplied include the names of the bride and the groom, when and where the marriage took place, and others. The completed can be submitted personally or mailed back to the office. There is a charge of $10 for certified marriage records and a $5 charge for spare copies which are payable by money order or check. Regardless of whether the requested records are found or not, the office will not issue a refund once the request has been submitted. In addition, it takes quite some time to process the records because public offices are usually short on employees.

Applying for a marriage starts with securing a license to marry at the Probate Court. The couple should appear at the court at the same time when they apply for a license. If one of the couple has not yet reached 18 years old, their parents will be asked to appear before the court as well. Once the license is approved, only the couple and their lawyers will have viewing rights to the license record.

Any person has the right to access marriage records because they are considered as public records. In most states, only the couple, their lawyers, and individuals or parties authorized by the court have the right to view and access everything that is on a marriage record. In Georgia, outside parties can view and access everything as well.

Various websites started to maintain marriage files too. They have the approval of the court to do so, so there are no legality issues to worry about as long as they observe the appropriate protocols. There are two kinds of websites that offer marriage files: free sites and paid sites. The sites differ on how much information they can supply and it is up to you to decide which one will best fit your information needs.

No doubt that it is convenient to obtain Marriage Divorce Records online because you can virtually do it anywhere as long as you have a computer, an Internet connection, and some basic information about the record you are looking for. Although the Internet holds a vast amount of information, it is hard to tell if they are all credible. So you can be sure that the information you are getting is real, you have to be a little history check on the service provider that you choose to use. Find out if other users that have used them in the past have a positive feedback on them or not.




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