Legal Procedure for Marriage Registration in India

The registration of marriage has become very important now a day in almost all the countries of the world. It has even been made compulsory in some of the countries like India. Such registration of marriage gives legal approval to your marriage. If one of the partners dies, such registration authorizes the second remaining partner to claim for the property and the investments like insurance, stocks and shares, fixed deposits, and provident fund amount of the dead partner. Many Indian origin immigrants visit India for their marriage from the USA. The tips provided in this article shall certainly help them in fulfilling the legal procedure of getting the necessary marriage certificate for issuance of visa for their spouse.

There are two procedures to register marriage in India. The first is to marry first as per the vidhi of any religion and then arrange for the marriage registration. The second way is to register your marriage first in the court, which is called registered marriage. It is not necessary to give any prior notice to the court in case you select the first method of registration. You have to submit the application in the prescribed forms that are available in all marriage registrar offices, situated in all the cities. It is required to get this form signed by the priest who has performed the marriage along with the signatures of the bride and the bridegroom. Some of the marriage photographs and the printed invitation cards for the marriage are required to be attached certifying that the marriage has actually taken place. The minimum age of the boy should be 21 years and the age of the girl should be 18 years in India for a legal marriage. Once this application form duly signed by all is submitted, the marriage certificate shall be issued to you within the period of around 2 days. Make sure to issue at least 6 to 8 certified copies of marriage certificate as it would be necessary to submit such certificate at various places like banks, insurance companies, and consulates for visa issuance purpose. Though, such certificate is generally issued in the regional language, insist to get such certificate in English as the certificate in English shall be considered valid at the international level for foreign travel purposes. Some nominal fees of around Rs.20 (50 cents) per copy are charged by the marriage registrar office for issuing the marriage certificate. This procedure is quite simple and you can easily get your marriage certificate within a short period of around 2/3 days of your marriage without any major hassle.

The second procedure of actually doing the marriage in the court is quite complicated and needs the help of a lawyer. In this case, you are required to submit your willingness to marry in writing at least one month in advance along with the birth certificates of both boy and a girl, the proof of the address for both, 2 passport size photographs of each, and couple of well known witnesses from both the sides. Moreover, both the boy and the girl must have stayed in that local area for at least last one month. The court will then put the names of the boy and a girl who want to marry on the court notice board for the period of one month. If anybody has any objections to this marriage, they can register their objections in writing with the specific reasons to the court. In that case, if the court feels that the reasons are valid, such marriages are not registered. If no objection is registered within a period of one month, the boy and the girl can go to the court on the thirty first day with their witnesses and do the marriage registration in front of the marriage registrar by signing in the record register. The marriage certificate shall be issued thereafter. As you can see, this second procedure of marriage registration is slightly complicated, time consuming, and may need some legal help. This procedure is generally selected in case the parents of the boy or a girl are not in agreement of the marriage.

Some precautions are required in issuing the marriage certificate. Both the names of the boy and the girl must be exactly spelled same as per passport. As otherwise, it will create legal complications at a later date at the time of issuing the visa for traveling abroad. The marriage date, place, and the time also must be specified very clearly and should be the same in all the documents.

Marriage certificate is an important document and everybody must get such certificate issued at the time of marriage only so as to avoid complications and the legal hurdles in issuing the same after around 5 to 7 years of marriage.