How in Rus' they understood whether a woman was married: distinctive signs of marriage in appearance

Article updated: March 25, 2021.

Author: Lawyer Sergey Vladimirovich.

In 2021, it has become possible to find out whether a person is married or not. This can be done by requesting the registry office or the archives of the city where the marriage took place.

But the request must be drawn up correctly, with copies of documents confirming the relationship. How to do this - read on.

The registry office can issue a document indicating whether a person is married: after submitting an application

Clause 3.1 of Article 9 of the Federal Law “On Acts of Civil Status”

State duty for issuing certificates from the registry office archive: 200 rubles

clause 7 of Article 333.26 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation

Sample application for marriage certificate

You can copy this sample, fill in your data and send it to the registry office of your city.

To the Central Civil Registry Office in Krasnokamensk

Applicant: Ivanova Marina Vladimirovna

Address: Krasnokamensk, st. Tveritina, house.

Statement

In connection with the consideration of the inheritance case, I ask you to issue me a marriage registration certificate for my mother Tamara Vladimirovna Ivanova, who got married on January 12 in Krasnokamensk.

01/11/2021 M.I. Ivanova

This method is suitable for those who need to find out about the marriage of their relatives or parents.

Example 1: Natalya wanted to know when her parents’ marriage and divorce were registered. To do this, she made an application to the registry office, paid a fee of 200 rubles and received documents from the archive a month later.

Definition of a civil registry office division

There are several ways to find out whether a person is divorced or not, but individuals simply cannot get acquainted with the information. Data on marital status is protected by the Federal Law “On the Protection of Personal Information of Citizens”, so a limited list of applicants can view the information.

Was there a divorce in the registry office?

Article 19 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation states that a marriage can be dissolved in the registry office only if both spouses want it. In addition, they should not have minor children.

If at least one of these conditions is not met, then you will have to go to court. Therefore, it is almost impossible for you to be scammed at the registry office and not even know about it. But still, this could happen in three situations:

You have been declared missing. For example, you left to live or work in another city or country and didn’t tell anyone about it. Your relatives wrote a statement to the police that you were missing, but for a year they did not find any information about you. After this, the court decides that you are missing. In this case, the registry office may dissolve the marriage, and you will not even know about it.
If the court finds one of the spouses incompetent. But this is not so easy to do; there must be a conclusion from a psychiatric examination.
One of the spouses was sent to prison for more than 3 years. This is the most common case; many wives use it so as not to wait for their husband. When a person leaves prison, he may not even realize that the marriage has been dissolved. After all, he does not have a stamp in his passport or a divorce certificate.

In each of these situations, you will have to make a written request to the registry office where you got married so that they give an official response. It is best to submit such a request in person in two copies, so that one of them is stamped with a stamp indicating acceptance of the documents.

If it is not possible to come in person, send the documents by mail, by registered mail with notification. But it will take longer, since the letter will take from 1 to 30 days.

A copy of the marriage registration certificate must be attached to the application. In the answer you will be told whether your marriage is dissolved or not; if it is dissolved, then you will be told where you can pick up the certificate.

Remember that for obtaining such a certificate you may be charged a state fee of 100 rubles. In addition, for issuing a certificate you will need to pay a fee of 200 rubles. To obtain a certificate or certificate you will need the following documents:

application form No. 19, which must be filled out in detail;
passport if you come in person or a notarized copy if you send by mail;
if your lawyer or representative deals with these issues, then you need a power of attorney on your behalf;
receipt of payment of the fee for obtaining information or documents.

Here is a sample of how to fill out an application, just provide your details.

After some time you will receive a response. There may be three options:

You may be sent a notice of form No. 35, which will say that your marriage has not been dissolved (or there is no information about this).
They will send you a certificate of divorce.
They will send you a divorce certificate.

Obtaining information for yourself

The legislation provides for cases of unilateral termination of marriage, so in practice it happens that one of the spouses does not take part in the divorce and does not know that the divorce was initiated by the second partner. Therefore, there are cases when it is advisable to independently prepare a request and clarify whether the marriage has been saved.

Was the divorce registered in the registry office?

Termination of marriage in the registry office without notifying the husband/wife is permitted:

recognition of a person as missing;
application of punishment in the form of imprisonment for a term of more than 3 years.

In this case, you must submit a written application to the registry office where the family relationship was initially registered. You can send a request:

personally;
by mail;
through a representative.

It takes from 10 to 30 days to process your request. The period will begin to count from the moment the state fee is paid and the receipt is submitted to the registry office. You will have to collect the answer in person.

Was the marriage terminated in court?

A unilateral divorce in court occurs when the defendant fails to respond to subpoenas and does not ask the court to adjourn the dispute for compelling reasons. If the summons is ignored three times, the judge will grant the divorce without the person present. You can obtain information about the termination of a union from the civil registry office.

Recommendations

You, as an intelligent person, want to find out whether your boyfriend, girlfriend or relative is officially married. Did you know that according to statistics, 35% of men hide their marital status when meeting people?

Interesting fact. Many registry offices and archive buildings were destroyed in the post-war period and now it is extremely difficult to find out when and with whom our parents and other relatives were married.

Heirs, children, second spouse, ex-wife and other interested parties can make a request to the registry office. Sometimes the request is made through the court if a case is pending.

Sometimes situations arise when you need to find out whether a person has officially registered a relationship. Any marriage is registered in the registry office. After the registration procedure, spouses receive a certificate. They also make a mark and stamp in the passport, which is proof.

If you are on good terms, you can try directly asking to see your marriage certificate or passport stamp.

If these documents are missing, perhaps there is a divorce certificate? This is what is issued if the marriage has been dissolved. If it is also not available anywhere, do not despair, the divorce certificate can be re-issued at the registry office, it does not take very much time. By the way, you can also get a duplicate of the marriage certificate from the registry office.

Now let’s imagine that you cannot directly ask or check the documents. You can often see advice to contact the registry office and find out information there. This is very bad advice for several reasons.

Firstly, the marriage could be registered in any registry office in our country. You cannot contact each of them. Secondly, no one will simply provide you with such information. Information about a citizen’s marital status is strictly confidential. Registry office employees can only provide it to spouses or their legal representatives.

From a legal perspective, these are all the methods you can use. However, not everything is so sad. Our readers gave some advice from their life experience that may help you.

Try talking to the person's neighbors or friends. Maybe they can tell you exactly his marital status. If you meet them in a cafe or bar, they may blurt it out in conversation. Although if a person agreed to meet you in the presence of friends or relatives, this means that he is most likely divorced or has never been in an official relationship. Family people prefer secrecy and meet in secret apartments so that no one finds out about it.
Look at the ring finger of your right hand. There may be a ring or a mark from it, this will give you some information to think about. Most men take off the ring and put it in their pants pocket if they decide to cheat on their wife. But women, as a rule, immediately say that they are married and do not even take off the ring.
With the growing popularity of social networks, you can easily find the person you need. Look at the marital status listed there. You can also study the photos that are on his page, perhaps in one of them he will be with his family. In addition to the photos themselves, look at who writes comments and leaves likes. If most of the photos have a like from the same person, it may very well be the husband or wife.
What kind of car does he have? A family person can rarely afford a sports car or a two-seater. He will also almost never drive a convertible. In most cases, married men buy minivans or a car with 5-7 seats to conveniently transport children and things.
What places does he like to dine at? If this is a pizzeria or a noisy bar where everyone knows him, most likely such a man is a bachelor. Here's another tip for you, talk to the bartender or waiter and find out how often he comes to them. You can clarify in conversation whether there is another woman with him. At first the bartender will refuse to tell you, but if you give him some money for a tip, he will tell you.
How he spends his weekends and vacations. A man who has a wife and children will never meet you on his day off. He will devote this time to his family. But he will plan dates with another woman on weekdays.
What time does he make appointments, during the day or after work? If it’s after work, it means he’s not expected home and he’s not worried about his family. But if you see each other only during working hours, it means he is trying to hide something.
Does he invite you to his home? A married man almost never brings his mistress to his apartment, because his wife might guess about it when she sees someone else's long hair on the floor. In addition, the wife can come unexpectedly at any time. Therefore, if you are not allowed into the apartment under some pretext, this is a clear sign that the man has a wife or another woman.
What things does he have in his apartment? If, nevertheless, you managed to come to this person’s home, carefully look at the situation. Pay special attention to the photographs and who is depicted in them. Look in the bathroom to see if there are women's cosmetics or shampoo. Or maybe his children’s children’s things are scattered around the apartment. Also, see if there are any other clothes or shoes in the hallway.
How a person talks to you on the phone and how he answers calls in front of you. A family man most often answers in short phrases and never gives compliments over the phone, since his wife can hear him. He replies to most phrases - we’ll talk in person. At the same time, he tries not to give any addresses where you meet him. Also, family people often have two or more phones. This is done so that the wife does not read SMS from other women and is not able to view the call history. As a rule, they leave a second phone number at work to contact you.
Talk to him. Maybe in a conversation he will accidentally mention his wife's name or will constantly change the conversation to another topic when you are interested in his personal life.
You can try contacting a private detective. You just need to contact an agency that has the appropriate license. As a rule, it is enough for an agent to follow a person for several days to determine whether he has a family or not.
Look carefully at his things. When he pays, you can notice if he has cards in another name (for example, in the name of his wife). You can ask him to look at the phone, perhaps there will be a photo of his wife and children on the screensaver.
Look at his passport. For example, when you book tickets somewhere. There may be a mark indicating that the person is married.

Who can find out about a divorce?

In Russia, information about the marital status of citizens is information that is not freely available.

This means that it is impossible for an outsider to obtain information about this from official sources. The registry office will not provide such information upon request, so it is pointless to contact them.

There are some cases where data will be provided, but only to a limited circle of people and in certain situations. Obviously, the citizen himself may need a certificate of divorce and other facts. It will be issued upon presentation of the passport and upon personal request.

If a third party wants to obtain information about the marital status of another citizen, he will not be able to do this, even if there is a family connection between these people. This question is quite relevant at a time when young people begin to make plans for the future with their partner and want to make sure that there are no legal obstacles to this.

Data on the marital status of any citizen can be provided exclusively to the person in respect of whom they are requested and in the presence of a marriage certificate. Unauthorized persons do not have access to this information. What to do if you really need information about the marital status of a loved one? There are several legal methods for this:

In relationships that are built on trust, people try not to deceive each other. If any doubts arise, you need to ask your significant other a frank question and there will be nothing more to worry about.
If, after a direct question, a person claims that his passport is lost, and he does not remember where the divorce certificate is, it would be reasonable to advise him to restore these important documents.
A personal conversation is not the only option for obtaining information about your loved one. There is always a circle of friends and acquaintances who have known a partner from an early age. During a meeting with them, you can ask to look at albums with photographs and correctly ask whether the guy was married and how long ago the divorce was registered.
Social media is a great source of this type of information. This is the most unobtrusive way to find out your marital status.
If there is reason to suspect a person of lying and hiding data, you can turn to a detective agency for help. A private investigation specialist will confirm or dispel doubts in a short period of time.

How to check

Not only close people, jealous girls or future spouses can check whether someone is married. In most cases, this information is required to protect yourself.

The most common reason is buying a new apartment. It is at this moment that you are most afraid of getting into trouble. After all, if it turns out that the seller has a spouse or children, and he hid this fact, you will have serious troubles in the future.

By law, when selling any property, you must obtain the consent of both spouses to complete the transaction. Realtors usually promise to check such information. Just don't trust them. After all, they simply do not have any legal ways to do this.

Here's what we can advise you. Before purchasing, be sure to ask the seller to obtain a notary certification that he is not married. Of course, the notary will also write down this information from the words of the seller, but something else is important here. If the case goes to court and it turns out that the seller deliberately wanted to deceive you, then the certification from the notary will be evidence. And now the seller will be held accountable for fraud.

Another piece of advice is to insure your transaction against such situations. Be sure to consider this option so as not to end up without money and property. In our practice, there were several cases when buyers did not take care of these actions in advance. We have seen some of them faint after deals were invalidated.

Query by database

Never trust online services or databases that promise to find information about a person. As a rule, these are scammers. In Russia, this information is secret and it is prohibited to make it publicly available.

Therefore, sites that promise to provide you with information about divorce simply take money from gullible citizens. They can give any answer, but it has nothing to do with the real state of affairs.

If you want to find out this information about your husband or wife, then you need to act differently:

First, check all the documents that you received by mail. If there was a divorce through the court, you should be sent a summons, even if you have not communicated with your spouse for a long time.
Contact the Magistrates' and District Courts with a written request to determine whether the divorce or court order occurred without your participation.
While you are waiting for an answer, call the court clerk and find out if court hearings are scheduled with your participation in the near future.
In addition, each court is now required to post all information about trials on its website. Look for them there; to do this, just enter your first and last name in the search bar. You will be shown all the meetings where you were a plaintiff or defendant.

If there is no information anywhere, it means the person did not divorce you through the court. But the registry office certainly could not do this, since they ask for the consent of both spouses for a divorce.

Marriage registration

The moment of divorce and the actual receipt of an official document are in no way connected; the certificate only confirms the fact of divorce, certifies it and is documentary evidence of the termination of the relationship. But what if you don’t have it on hand? How to find out if spouses are divorced if there is no divorce certificate? It happens that former spouses from among divorced couples, for various reasons, do not receive the specified certificate. Someone is in another region at the time of divorce, someone is not eager to meet with their ex-spouse again - as a result, such an important document is not issued to them.

The civil registry office provides information and issues documents on marriage or divorce only to the person who applies for them. Find out whether the divorce took place through the registry office. According to the Family Code, a marriage can be dissolved through the registry office only on the basis of the mutual consent of the spouses.

Therefore, a divorce through the registry office could not take place without your consent. However, there are exceptions to this rule. The registry office may dissolve a marriage on the basis of a unilateral application from one of the spouses if the spouse is sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 3 years or more, is declared dead or missing. Therefore, theoretically, there is a possibility that the marriage was dissolved through the registry office unilaterally. You can find out the final decision from the judge or the secretary. A husband or wife has the right to protect their interests independently or to seek legal assistance.

It is possible to apply for a hearing in absentia in the absence of the spouses. The final judgment is handed over to legal representatives or sent by mail.

An extract is sent to the registry office. If a decision has not been received, they apply to the court for a copy. The application, drawn up in any form, contains:

Contact information.
Full name
Passport details.
Review date.
Signature.

The husband is hiding, refusing to appear, delaying the process, and it is impossible to find out his residential address. The judge evaluates the information and behavior of the defendant and has the right to file a divorce at the request of the plaintiff.

Was there a divorce in court?

If the location of one of the spouses is unknown, then the court may grant a divorce without notice. But as soon as you become aware of this, you can challenge this decision. In addition, remember that after the decision comes into force, the registry office needs at least three days to make an entry about this in the register of citizens’ states.

If you want to find out whether a person has been divorced through the court, then you need to send a written request to the chairman of the court and attach to it a copy of your passport and a copy of the marriage registration certificate. You can obtain a sample of this statement from the court office.