Updated List - California Marriage License Records

California’s marriage rate only stands at 5 per 1000 people which are very few considering that they are the largest state by population. This according to the California Marriage License Records kept and taken care of by the Office of Vital Records of the California Department of Public Health. Marriage documents are essential tool to conduct Genealogical researches, background checks, marital history checks, and many more.It (the department) will not show if marriages are of the opposite sex or of the same sex. Only marriages recorded from 1949-1986 and 1998-1999 are indexed. For the years not included, seek the help of the County Recorder’s office where you can also secure certified copies of marriage documents. The County Clerk’s Office where a license of given, is in-charge of the custody of confidential records which are exclusively available to individuals mentioned in the documents. There are two classes of certified copies namely: certified authorized copies and certified informational copies. They both have the same content but the difference is informational copies can only be used to inform and not as a valid document that you can use for legal purposes like a court hearing. Authorized copies are limited to individuals mentioned in the documents, legal individual, or any agency or office sanctioned by the law. Certified marriage documents cost $14 for every copy. The Department of Health takes a long time to process requests, usually reaching half a year. Heading straight to the County Recorder’s office is good move if you want the documents acquired as soon as possible. Make sure you know the groom’s full name, bride’s first name and last name, and the date of marriage so you can initiate a search.Secure a request form by going online and supply all needed data’s. Supply a sworn statement with your signature and send it with the completed request form. Notarization of the sworn statement is necessary for mail requests. Absence of the sworn statement will make your requests incomplete and will not be accepted for processing. All payments made are non-refundable regardless if requests are accepted or not. A more effective approach to obtain marriage documents is through professional record keepers. There are sites that require fees and there are some that are for free. You can secure marriage records from either of the two. Those that require fees is a much better option because they have a lot more sources where they can gather more information. The database that they keep is linked to public and private databases. The version of documents that they provide is sorted out to make it simpler to decipher.