Scarlett Posted November 30, 2018 Author Share Posted November 30, 2018 9 minutes ago, MissLemon said: New York's records aren't so transparent. I've tried to get marriage and divorce records for my parents, and my request has been denied. According to the NYS website, I cannot get this information until it has been on file for 50 years AND both of my parents are deceased, (even though I am the child named in the divorce records, according to NYS, I have no right to them unless both parents agree to let me have the information. My parents won't sign the form). What exactly are you asking for? The full court records might not be available, but the record that two people divorced is a matter of public record. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shoeless Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 (edited) I've asked for genealogy copies, which are unofficial and uncertified copies of the record. I've asked for a divorce certificate, which is different from a decree. https://www.health.ny.gov/vital_records/genealogy.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/vital_records/divorce.htm Everything I have read states I cannot get this information without permission from my parents, (which I do not have) or a court order. My parents won't give permission because I'm not supposed to know that my mother had an affair and ran off with my step-father 40+ years ago. My grandmother let that cat out of the bag 20 years ago, but I'm still not supposed to know about it, lol. There are some timeline questions I have from my past and knowing the date of marriage, date of divorce would help me settle some things in my mind. But that's not nearly good enough reason to hire a lawyer to petition the court. "Well, your honor, my client would sleep better without her parents gaslighting her about the circumstances of her birth and visitation schedule all those years ago...". If anyone knows of another way to get this info out of NYS, I'd love to know. Sorry for the tanget. Edited November 30, 2018 by MissLemon 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted November 30, 2018 Author Share Posted November 30, 2018 13 minutes ago, MissLemon said: I've asked for genealogy copies, which are unofficial and uncertified copies of the record. I've asked for a divorce certificate, which is different from a decree. https://www.health.ny.gov/vital_records/genealogy.htm https://www.health.ny.gov/vital_records/divorce.htm Everything I have read states I cannot get this information without permission from my parents, (which I do not have) or a court order. My parents won't give permission because I'm not supposed to know that my mother had an affair and ran off with my step-father 40+ years ago. My grandmother let that cat out of the bag 20 years ago, but I'm still not supposed to know about it, lol. There are some timeline questions I have from my past and knowing the date of marriage, date of divorce would help me settle some things in my mind. But that's not nearly good enough reason to hire a lawyer to petition the court. "Well, your honor, my client would sleep better without her parents gaslighting her about the circumstances of her birth and visitation schedule all those years ago...". If anyone knows of another way to get this info out of NYS, I'd love to know. Sorry for the tanget. It is late and my brain is foggy, but are you saying you can not get the basic dates of the divorce.? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustEm Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 2 minutes ago, Scarlett said: It is late and my brain is foggy, but are you saying you can not get the basic dates of the divorce.? Divorces can be sealed if the judge allows it. If they are sealed I believe no part of it is public record. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted November 30, 2018 Author Share Posted November 30, 2018 1 minute ago, hjffkj said: Divorces can be sealed if the judge allows it. If they are sealed I believe no part of it is public record. Those links indicated ANY divorce degree wouldn’t only be released to the party of the divorce or by court order, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shoeless Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 5 minutes ago, Scarlett said: It is late and my brain is foggy, but are you saying you can not get the basic dates of the divorce.? Yes. I cannot get either the date of marriage or the date of the divorce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 12 hours ago, Scarlett said: Surely though if you are dating a man it should be possible to verify that he is divorced. Because if he isn't a liar you will know enough of his past to verify. If things start not checking out...maybe you are dealing with a liar. Granted, this was 25 years ago now, but it never occurred to me to verify whether or not my now-husband was married, separated or divorced. In fact, I don't think I have ever asked him if he was married before, much less checked on it. Of course, I am a child of parents who were still married, as was he, so maybe that's why it never occurred to me. I had two divorced siblings, but all of his were married. It's not like I didn't know people got divorced. We were in our late 20's when we married, so we had both had plenty of years before to marry/separate/divorce. I just checked online in the county where we married and they don't have any marriage information available online. There is a form to request a marriage certificate that can be filled out and sent in with a copy of your id. My niece has been married 2 x and divorced 1 x in that county and nothing for her is online, either. The name of the office is listed if you need to go search records. I remember when we went to pick up certified copies of our marriage certificates from the courthouse about two months after we married and the lady led us back to a library, pulled a leather bound book off of the shelf, showed us "our page' - and it was a full page - she got the record numbers off of it then went and made up marriage certificates for us to take with us. The one in the book is the "original" the one we have is a "sealed copy" because it has the clerks signature and the county seal embossed into it over her signature. That is when we discovered the city of the wedding was recorded wrong, but we have never gone back to try to correct it. It's recorded as the next city over, which is where the pastor who conducted our ceremony pastors' a church. The city isn't on our copies of it, just the county and state. The clerk said if the pastor wrote a letter that they would correct it, but we never followed thorough on it. Having it recorded in the county is what is important. Boy was that a rabbit trail of a story! With the available technology we have today, more and more places are putting public records online. But you would still have to know where to start looking. Outside of looking at every single licensed issued and every single divorce case filed, it would be hard, if not impossible, to trust that you are looking in the right places. It also goes back to the fact that it's hard to prove that something didn't happen. The most complete record of who is named what and where are they living is the US Census report. Once a report is released to the public, you can go online and look at the census for the area you think a person lives in and read a door to door accounting of who lives in what house. - their names & ages, marital stats, and then for people who got the long form, there are additional questions that help with the gathering of statistical information. We had some family fun a few years ago when they released a census report from when my father was a child. Because we knew the address, I was able to find it easily as the census takers would just walk a block, then go on to the next block. My grandmother was picked as a long form person and both hers and my grandfather's occupations were listed, as how much they made. It's really cool to see that handwritten page digitized so that I can see it all these years later! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted November 30, 2018 Author Share Posted November 30, 2018 2 minutes ago, MissLemon said: Yes. I cannot get either the date of marriage or the date of the divorce. That is just so bizarre. I called a parish in LA and got the dates of marriage and divorce for my xMIL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shoeless Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 Just now, Scarlett said: That is just so bizarre. I called a parish in LA and got the dates of marriage and divorce for my xMIL. It truly is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlett Posted November 30, 2018 Author Share Posted November 30, 2018 4 minutes ago, TechWife said: Granted, this was 25 years ago now, but it never occurred to me to verify whether or not my now-husband was married, separated or divorced. In fact, I don't think I have ever asked him if he was married before, much less checked on it. Of course, I am a child of parents who were still married, as was he, so maybe that's why it never occurred to me. I had two divorced siblings, but all of his were married. It's not like I didn't know people got divorced. We were in our late 20's when we married, so we had both had plenty of years before to marry/separate/divorce. I just checked online in the county where we married and they don't have any marriage information available online. There is a form to request a marriage certificate that can be filled out and sent in with a copy of your id. My niece has been married 2 x and divorced 1 x in that county and nothing for her is online, either. The name of the office is listed if you need to go search records. I remember when we went to pick up certified copies of our marriage certificates from the courthouse about two months after we married and the lady led us back to a library, pulled a leather bound book off of the shelf, showed us "our page' - and it was a full page - she got the record numbers off of it then went and made up marriage certificates for us to take with us. The one in the book is the "original" the one we have is a "sealed copy" because it has the clerks signature and the county seal embossed into it over her signature. That is when we discovered the city of the wedding was recorded wrong, but we have never gone back to try to correct it. It's recorded as the next city over, which is where the pastor who conducted our ceremony pastors' a church. The city isn't on our copies of it, just the county and state. The clerk said if the pastor wrote a letter that they would correct it, but we never followed thorough on it. Having it recorded in the county is what is important. Boy was that a rabbit trail of a story! With the available technology we have today, more and more places are putting public records online. But you would still have to know where to start looking. Outside of looking at every single licensed issued and every single divorce case filed, it would be hard, if not impossible, to trust that you are looking in the right places. It also goes back to the fact that it's hard to prove that something didn't happen. The most complete record of who is named what and where are they living is the US Census report. Once a report is released to the public, you can go online and look at the census for the area you think a person lives in and read a door to door accounting of who lives in what house. - their names & ages, marital stats, and then for people who got the long form, there are additional questions that help with the gathering of statistical information. We had some family fun a few years ago when they released a census report from when my father was a child. Because we knew the address, I was able to find it easily as the census takers would just walk a block, then go on to the next block. My grandmother was picked as a long form person and both hers and my grandfather's occupations were listed, as how much they made. It's really cool to see that handwritten page digitized so that I can see it all these years later! Right, I realize that if a person is transient it would be difficult to track his life down. But I am talking about Chris Watts who was dating a co worker and who told her he was in the middle of a divorce and then that he was actually divorced. I would think....although apparently all states are not created equal in this...that she should have been able to prove he was a liar. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluegoat Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 When I think about it, most of the people I have dated I knew something about already through other people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forty-two Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 I only seriously dated dh. We were both in college, so the more common lie would be neglecting to mention a boyfriend/girlfriend back home, although I suppose you could still neglect to mention a spouse back home, too. In any case, he presented himself as single, and I never had any reason to distrust it. I did no research or background check, nor did it occur to me to do so. Even looking back, I think I learned enough about him from meeting family and friends (both on-campus and back home), going to his home church, etc. that it would have had to have been a multi-person conspiracy to keep the existence of another "official" relationship from me. I mean, he still could have cheated on me with another woman, but it would have been seriously unlikely for *me* to have inadvertently been "the other woman". I knew too many people who had known him for years. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsie Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 DH had worked together for several years He had been married before and I knew his ex-wife. In fact, one of the first times I was around either of them was at a business dinner when she was sitting next to me and went on and on about how horrible her then-husband was because he did not understand her need for experimentation with other men and why she was having affairs. It was shortly after that I heard they were divorcing, and several years after that before we started dating. I just realized that as I was typing this that I never did check the court records and make sure that he was truly divorced; it never occurred to me to do that. His parents thought he was divorced, his ex-wife thought he was divorced, his kids thought he was divorced.... At the same time we had coworkers where one said that they were married and the other said that the were not. (This was not a question of whether they divorced but whether they had gotten married). So, just because you are working with someone doesn't mean you will know if they are married or not. My husband and I did have great concerns about a holes in stories of a man a family member was dating. We did look up court records to see if the person had married and divorced. We still wonder if there aren't some things we would discover in the records of other states. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechWife Posted November 30, 2018 Share Posted November 30, 2018 (edited) 12 hours ago, Scarlett said: Right, I realize that if a person is transient it would be difficult to track his life down. But I am talking about Chris Watts who was dating a co worker and who told her he was in the middle of a divorce and then that he was actually divorced. I would think....although apparently all states are not created equal in this...that she should have been able to prove he was a liar. But you also opened up a broader conversation. Edited November 30, 2018 by TechWife 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted December 1, 2018 Share Posted December 1, 2018 In college I went on three dates with a man who ended up being married. Worse, he had a baby and lived with his mother in law. I found out when a coworker mentioned his daughter (we worked for a rather large company). This was pre social media being a big thing. Pre internet mariage records, and he had been married in a different state anyway. I've definitely been on multiple dates with some men before I bothered googling them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KidsHappen Posted December 1, 2018 Share Posted December 1, 2018 I was just recently looking through our important paperwork and discovered that my first husband's divorce from his previous wife wasn't final until approximately three weeks after we got married. So I don't know if our marriage was ever legal at all. I found this out from military paperwork so you think they would have questioned it especially since the two dates were right next to each other. But no one ever questioned it and I didn't become aware of the fact until a few decades after our divorce so I don't know that it even matters now but I guess it could really puzzle someone doing genealogy research in the future. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktgrok Posted December 1, 2018 Share Posted December 1, 2018 I never had that happen, but I did start dating my DH before my divorce to my ex was final. Ex DH dragged his feet (not because he wanted to stay married, he was just that lazy) so everything took forever. Then they lost our paperwork at the courthouse, so after months of being told we just needed to be patient they finally found it stuck under something on someone's desk, so the waiting for a date started all over again. I suppose DH could have thought I was lying but he quickly met my friends, parents, etc so unless they were ALL in on it a lie would have been exposed quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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