Georgia Free Marriage Records

By Ben Kingsley


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 form is available at the Vital Records Office or it can be downloaded from their official website. If you want to make a request, you should be able to at least provide the full names of the spouses and the date and place of the marriage. Once the request form is filled-out appropriately, you can submit it personally or send it through mail to the Vital Records Office. It costs $10 for every certified copy of the records and an additional $5 for extra copies. The fees are payable by check or money order only. There no refunds given even if no records are found. Expect that the return period of your request will be quite lengthy because often times government offices are undermanned.

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.

Marriage files are part of public records. Usually, not all the details found on the files are disclosed to the public unless specified by the court. Often times, only the bride, groom, their attorneys, and specific people can view all the details. But in Georgia, they are not deemed as confidential, so any person who requests for them can view all the details too.

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.

Acquiring Marriage Divorce Records online is hassle free. You can perform a search anywhere you feel comfortable and anytime you need to. All you need to prepare are a computer with Web connection and basic information about your desired marriage files. The Web is widely known as a source of massive amounts of information. Unfortunately, not everything that is uploaded can be considered as genuine information. To determine if you are given genuine information, you must check the credibility of the website, whose service you are going to avail, of your choice. Look for user reviews and see if other users are satisfied with the website or not.




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