So you need to check out somebody's marital status. Where can you find free online marriage records in the U.S.?

Marriage licenses are maintained at the County level. However, most States can search for and issue marriage certificates (a document certifying that a marriage has taken place, not the same as a marriage license, which is obtained prior to the marriage).

It might seem that the easiest way to search for free marriage records would be to search the State's online index of marriages on its website, using the groom's name or bride's maiden name, plus some other identifier, like date of birth. And if face you can do it this way in a few States, like Texas and Florida. But most States don't make it this easy. For example, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, and many others don't maintain State repositories on their sites at all. You have to go to the County level to search for free marriage records. You can find any County's website easily by entering the name of the County into Google. Some of these websites allow you to name-search; others require you to provide more detailed information or take additional steps.

What if the State and/or County where you need to search doesn't happen to have a website that provides free marriage record info? In this case, I suggest you simply call the County itself and request that a name search be conducted. You'll find this is easy in most small Counties, but it gets progressively harder the bigger (more populous) the County is. Even so, it can be done in nearly all Counties if you're persistent and don't mind getting stuck in voice mail jail awhile. After a few minutes (hopefully) a clerk will answer your call who can run your name search for you while you wait. The clerk may, however, want you to specify a span of years, e.g., 2005 = 2010, for your search, so you should be ready to do so if asked.

Which office in the County should you ask for when you call? Marriage record indexes are maintained by a variety of offices in the nation's Counties. In most cases, you'll need the Recorder's Office; in some cases, it'll be the Family Court (in a few rural counties, it's the "Filing Office").

We've found the best strategy is to simply tell the telephone operator, "I would like to have a marriage records search conducted. What office can do that for me?" and let them connect you to the proper office.

Of course, you can find telephone numbers for the County or Counties you need to call on their websites.

Note: If you need to find out what County a given City is in, go to CityCountyXref.info.

For more information about searching for marriage and/or divorce records, plus a detailed listing of County websites that provide marital status information online, check out the article citation below.