Free Palm Beach County Divorce Records

One of the requisites of marriage would be capacity on the part of both parties to the marriage to get married, and this capacity is only obtained through a combination of capacity to act and legal capacity. The latter is something that is acquired through birth and could only be lost through death, while the former is something that could be acquired upon attainment of the age of majority, and could be obtained and lost numerous times during the lifetime of a person. Both must concur before a person could get married, and it is from this viewpoint that divorce records such as Palm Beach County Divorce Records are important.

After all, divorce is something that terminates marriage, and marriage is an event that would cause a person to lose his capacity to act in terms of marriage. A person could only be married to one person during any given time, and a second marriage while the first was still in existence is a bigamous marriage for which a person could be prosecuted for in several jurisdictions. Simply put, divorce is something that would restore the capacity to act in regards to marriage of a person and that is the reason why it is the first thing that a previously married person should present when he or she applies for a marriage license at the proper authorities.

The fact that these records are mostly of use only to those who are parties to the divorce, and the fact that there are some things that may be written on the record that would be of a confidential nature, meant that these divorce records are usually only available to be requested for by those who are parties to the divorce, and those that are not would have to be content with receiving a copy of a certification of the existence of the record. Note, however, that this certification is sometimes enough for a competent authority to declare that there was indeed a divorce.

Copies of the divorce records are available at the state level through the Florida Department of Health, and the procedure starts with the person who wants to obtain the record first sending a request letter to the head of the Vital Records Division. Included in said request letter should be the name of the parties to the divorce, the date, or at least the approximate date, that the divorce was granted, and the place where the same was granted. Of course, the personal contact information of the person making the request should also be included, plus the required fee which is five dollars for the search itself, plus an additional two dollars for every year that would be included in the search parameters for a maximum of fifty dollars.

Palm Beach County Divorce Decrees may also be searched for online through the use of online databases. Faster, more efficient, and considerably cheaper considering that most would charge only the most minimum of fees, these mostly privately owned online databases preset substantially the same information as the official sites and archives, though note that because of their privately owned nature, any information obtained from these sources could not be used for official proceedings.