Prior Marriage Certificates

[CVN Dallas 6]

The NVC instruction for submit documents stated the following: 

"If you are or have been married, you must obtain original marriage certificate/s or certified copies of EVERY marriage."

 

Is this apply to Applicant or Petitioner or Both?

Does anyone experiencing visa rejected at interview because prior marriage certificates were not available?

 

 

 

[Dashinka 25,163]

When searching here on VJ for "NVC prior marriage certificate", the threads are mixed.  Fundamentally, all that should be required for previous marriages of either the petitioner or beneficiary should be certified copies of the legal termination of those marriages, but as you showed, the wording is asking for certificates.  From what I am seeing it is best to include certified copies of previous marriage certificates for both parties along with the the legal divorce decrees, and if something is not available, upload an explanation as to why.

 

Good Luck!

[appleblossom 3,571]

9 hours ago, CVN Dallas said:

The NVC instruction for submit documents stated the following: 

"If you are or have been married, you must obtain original marriage certificate/s or certified copies of EVERY marriage."

 

Is this apply to Applicant or Petitioner or Both?

Does anyone experiencing visa rejected at interview because prior marriage certificates were not available?

 

 

 

 

That bit is for the applicant. But scroll down the page and there is a ‘petitioners documents’ section, and under that it says "If you are applying for an IR1, CR1, or F2A visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident and your petitioning spouse was previously married:  You must obtain evidence of the termination of EVERY prior marriage your petitioning spouse has had. This evidence must be an original or certified copy of one of the following documents:  FINAL legal divorce decree, death certificate, or annulment papers."

 

So the answer is both of you. 

[Ryan H 3,849]

Moved from Progress Reports to Process & Procedures.

[pushbrk 13,290]

14 hours ago, appleblossom said:

 

That bit is for the applicant. But scroll down the page and there is a ‘petitioners documents’ section, and under that it says "If you are applying for an IR1, CR1, or F2A visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident and your petitioning spouse was previously married:  You must obtain evidence of the termination of EVERY prior marriage your petitioning spouse has had. This evidence must be an original or certified copy of one of the following documents:  FINAL legal divorce decree, death certificate, or annulment papers."

 

So the answer is both of you. 

Read more carefully. For petitioner, it's marriage termination documents only.  For visa applicant (foreign spouse) it's marriage certificates and termination documentation.  In practice though, the need for marriage certificates for prior marriages relates to tracking name changes, so it's best to provide them.  If you submit a birth certificate for Mary Smith, who later became Mary Jones, but when she divorced Mr. Jones her maiden name is not mentioned in the divorce decree (sometimes yes and sometimes no) and Mary is now Mary Adams (wife of John Adams, petitioner) the marriage certificate is how the name change gets tracked.

 

Petitioners don't have that problem at the NVC stage, but sometimes they do at the petition stage.  It depends on the details in the Documents.

[appleblossom 3,571]

3 hours ago, pushbrk said:

Read more carefully. For petitioner, it's marriage termination documents only.  For visa applicant (foreign spouse) it's marriage certificates and termination documentation. 

 

😳 I did read it carefully and simply provided the wording to the OP that they seemed to have missed. I gave them the info about certificates, and it’s up to them what they need to provide from that.