Marriage needs a valid license, two consenting adults, and an authorized officiant. The fine print can be hard to understand though. Lots of couples run into problems that they never saw coming. Some states make you wait a few days between when you pick up your license and when you actually get married. Others will knock hundreds of dollars off the license fee if you go through premarital counseling first.
Four states still don’t have any minimum age requirements for marriage at all. Montana makes women who are under 50 get blood tests first. Common-law marriage only exists in eight states, and, in those places, you could technically wind up legally married without ever signing a single document or having a real ceremony.
Most couples can handle a standard marriage without any legal help whatsoever. Some situations really do need an attorney’s input before the big day though. Having substantial assets, a business, visa complications, or custody arrangements from a previous relationship means you have legal issues beyond what a county clerk can handle.
Although each state may differ regarding the rules governing marriage, the basic and general marriage requirements typically include the following:
- Each of the parties must be of legal age to marry; if they are under the legal age, they must obtain parental consent
- Each party must currently be unmarried; if either of the parties has been previously married, they must be legally divorced
- The couple must obtain a marriage license from the county clerk’s office
- Each of the parties must have sufficient mental capacity to understand the significance and legal implications of a marriage
- Each party must not be closely related to each other
The law has specific requirements that change wildly by state. An attorney can also help navigate these complexities when your situation demands it.
Here’s what you need to know about marriage requirements and legal help.
Age and Consent Rules for Marriage
Marriage laws in the United States vary quite a bit from state to state. But you’ll find a few essential requirements that apply almost everywhere. The age requirement is probably the simplest one. In most places across the country, you need to be at least 18 years old if you want to walk into a courthouse and get married on your own. For 16 and 17 year olds, the situation is different because you’ll need parental consent in almost every state. A few states still allow even younger teens to marry but only with special permission from a judge, and this has actually turned into quite a controversial issue. Advocacy groups have been working hard for reforms because they’re concerned about the potential for abuse and exploitation of minors.
Beyond the age requirements, there’s another main requirement that has to be present for any marriage to be legally valid. Both parties have to possess the mental capacity to know what marriage is and what it means for their lives. This is common sense and one of the most fundamental protections we have. Each person has to fully understand the commitment they’re about to make and they have to enter into it voluntarily. Nobody can be coerced or deceived into a marriage through threats or big lies about the essential facts.
Those wild Vegas wedding scenes from movies where someone wakes up with a ring on their finger and no memory of the night before wouldn’t hold up in court in real life. If either person was severely intoxicated or under the effects of drugs at the time of the ceremony, the marriage can be annulled. The law takes the same stance when someone has been threatened into marriage or when their consent was obtained through fraud about something fundamental.
All these protective measures serve an essential role in our legal system. They’re designed to shield vulnerable people from exploitation. Someone with advanced dementia may no longer have the capacity to make this kind of big life choice. Or think about a person who is trapped in an abusive relationship who might face intense pressure to marry their abuser. The legal framework attempts to stop these harmful scenarios from ever materializing in the first place.
State-by-state variations add some more wrinkles to marriage law. A marriage ceremony that’s legal in Nevada might not meet the requirements in New York. Some states have much stricter standards around the minimum age and the conditions under which minors can marry with permission. These differences also reflect each state’s approach to protecting its residents as they respect individual freedoms.
Your Marriage License and Required Documents
You and your partner are going to need to make a trip to the county clerk’s office together and the two of you should have valid identification ready to go. A driver’s license or passport works just fine for this. Some offices will also ask to see your birth certificate and it doesn’t hurt to bring that along just in case.
The fees for a marriage license change quite a bit from place to place and you can expect to pay anywhere from $35 to $150 for yours. Every county is a little different with payment methods too. Some take credit cards and others only accept cash or checks so a quick phone call beforehand can save you from having to make a second trip.
Marriage licenses have expiration dates and this is where many couples run into trouble. Most jurisdictions will give you somewhere between 30 and 90 days to actually hold your ceremony after you pick up the license. Waiting too long means that the license expires and you’ll have to go back to the clerk’s office and pay for a brand new one all over again. Timing does matter with these documents.
Anyone who was married before needs to bring proof that the previous marriage ended legally. The clerk’s office needs to see the official divorce paperwork or death certificate and it needs to be the certified copy with the raised seal on it. A plain photocopy won’t cut it, even if it looks perfectly legible. Couples often have to reschedule their appointments because they only brought photocopies with them.
The legal status of your wedding officiant is another area that might cause problems without proper verification ahead of time. Your friend who got ordained online through one of the websites might not actually qualify to perform marriages in your state. Every state has different requirements for who can legally officiate a wedding. The clerk’s office can usually confirm if a particular person has the right authorization to officiate in your area, so it’s definitely worth checking before your ceremony date arrives.
Marriage Laws That Change by State
Marriage laws change wildly from state to state and you need to know what you’re stepping into before you start planning anything. Every state has its own requirements and, without checking them ahead of time, you could run into some serious problems.
Some states actually make you wait a set amount of time before you can officially get married. Wisconsin has this mandatory 6-day waiting period after you receive your license. Nevada is the total opposite and lets couples get married right away. The requirements can change dramatically based on where you’re going to hold your ceremony.
Blood tests used to be the standard requirement in most states but almost everyone has dropped that requirement now. Montana is one of the few holdouts and still asks women under 50 to get tested for some reason. Most of these old health requirements have disappeared over the years but you should still verify what your state currently needs just to be safe.
Get this, eight states still accept something called common-law marriage. Texas and Colorado are two of the big ones. You could actually be legally married in these states without ever going through a ceremony or putting your signature on any papers. This happens when couples live together for a certain number of years and always present themselves as married to friends, family and their community.
The person who performs your ceremony also needs to have the right credentials and this changes quite a bit. Tennessee is pretty relaxed about it and lets anyone get ordained online to officiate weddings. Virginia takes a much stricter stance and needs all officiants to register with the state before they can perform any ceremonies. Your cousin who got ordained on some random website could be legal in one state but be invalid in another.
A far-off destination wedding requires you to make sure that your home state will accept the marriage when you return. Some states have pretty strict requirements on which ceremonies they’ll accept from other places. You definitely don’t want to discover that your beautiful beach wedding in another country doesn’t actually count legally back home.
Marriage Cases Where You Need a Lawyer
Lots of couples can walk into a courthouse with their partner and take care of the marriage paperwork on their own just fine. The forms are simple and the process is smooth enough that you don’t need anyone else’s help. But you’ll find some situations where you really want to bring in a lawyer before you walk down that aisle.
Money has a way of making marriage more nuanced than it needs to be. Owning a business or standing to inherit substantial assets later means those assets become part of the marriage equation whether you think about them or not. Your spouse automatically gets rights to these assets when you get married. For example, there are business owners who learned the hard way that their ex-spouse owned half of their company after just a few years of marriage. The divorce paperwork spelled it all out in black and white.
International marriages bring a whole different level of complications to the table. You have visa applications to work through and citizenship requirements that change wildly between countries. Some couples find themselves in a position where they pay taxes to two different governments on the exact same income. These aren’t problems that you want to work through on your own.
A few situations should make you stop and think about legal help. Rental properties or investment accounts worth more than your annual income create complications. A family business that might come your way eventually adds another layer. Marriage to somebody who lives in another country brings its own challenges. Each one of these scenarios suggests you probably need professional help.
A lawyer consultation will probably run you somewhere between $1000 and $2000. That sounds like a lot of money until you think about what could happen without the right legal protection. You could lose half your business or spend years trying to untangle tax problems that could have been avoided from the start.
Most couples worry about bringing up legal advice because they don’t want to upset their partner. Most lawyers are also great at explaining the benefits in a way that makes both partners feel comfortable about the choice.
Build Your Prenup the Right Way
Prenuptial agreements have developed a pretty bad reputation over the years, and it’s easy to see why when every celebrity divorce splashes their messy contract information across the tabloids. These agreements are just helpful documents that protect both partners when they’re done correctly.
A prenup needs to meet certain requirements if you want it to stand up in court later on. Financial transparency matters a lot between both partners. Every asset, debt, and investment account needs to be on the table. Every person also needs their own separate attorney because one lawyer can’t realistically represent both of your interests fairly. Timing matters too. A prenup that gets signed the night before the wedding is going to raise red flags with any judge who reviews it. Courts are extremely suspicious of agreements that look rushed or coerced and for good reason.
Many couples now include sunset clauses in their agreements which essentially set expiration dates on some provisions. After 10 or 15 years of marriage, some of the early financial protections might not feel as necessary anymore and the agreement can show that natural change.
The best strategy is to start these conversations early and be transparent about your concerns and about what you want to protect.
What Are the Differences Between Community Property and Separate Property?
There are laws on the books that govern marital property. Marital property includes any assets or funds that were obtained over the course of a marriage.
These laws typically come into place in cases of separation or divorce instead of during the marriage. Marital property may be referred to as community property or shared property.
It may also be further differentiated as separate property. Community property is property that is owned by both spouses.
It is important to note that different states have different laws governing how property is classified during a marriage. Generally, any property that the married couple acquired while they were married to one another is classified as community property.
When Your Marriage Needs Legal Support?
International marriages have a different rulebook that you need to know about as you prepare to walk down the aisle. The K-1 visa process alone needs mountains of paperwork and every country has its own timeline that you have to follow to the letter. Immigration officials need concrete proof that your relationship is legitimate and they’ve seen every possible scheme over the years. The Marriage fraud amendments that passed back in 1986 gave the government more power to look at these unions and now they do separate interviews with each partner to catch any inconsistencies in your stories.
A previous marriage can turn into a big complication when trying to tie the knot again. The divorce that you thought was finalized years ago might actually still be pending in another state or country and that’s a problem that you definitely want to catch early. Plenty of couples discover paperwork problems that they never knew existed. Child custody arrangements from an earlier relationship add some more complications to the situation because they can dictate when you’re allowed to remarry and how your new marriage might affect your existing agreements.
Military families have a different category of obstacles that most civilian attorneys won’t understand. A deployment order could arrive days before your planned ceremony or right after you’ve exchanged vows. One spouse might get stationed overseas at any time and you’ll need certain power of attorney documents ready to go. The military also has its own strict guidelines for spousal qualifications and just when benefit coverage kicks in and these don’t always match up with the civilian marriage laws.
A conversation with an attorney is very important before you say “I do” when you have a child with unique needs. That new marriage certificate might disrupt your child’s access to government programs like Medicaid or SSI payments. You’ll usually need to set up particular trust arrangements that preserve those benefits as you build your new family structure.
A religious ceremony doesn’t automatically translate into a legal marriage in every jurisdiction. Some faiths mandate that partners belong to the same religious community before they’ll perform the ceremony. It can get especially complicated for inheritance matters because a religious union that your state doesn’t officially accept could leave your spouse without any legal rights to your estate.
Do You Need Help From a Lawyer?
If you have any issues, questions, or concerns related to finances in your marriage, it is important to consult with a prenuptial agreement attorney. Your attorney can address your questions as well as advise you of the laws in your state.
Marriage is one life event that manages to be very personal and weirdly bureaucratic at the same time. All these legal requirements and possible complications can make your head spin. Love itself is pretty simple. The legal machinery around marriage just gets quite complex based on where you live and what your goals look like. The ones who actually take the time to understand the requirements ahead of time usually have a much smoother path to their wedding day and everything that comes after.
Nobody expects you to turn into a legal expert overnight or anything like that. A general sense of what your state needs from you can save you from those frantic last-minute phone calls and paperwork disasters though. You’re already putting hours into choosing the perfect venue and tasting wedding cakes and considering flower arrangements anyway. The legal groundwork deserves some space on that to-do list too because it’s just as much a part of creating the wedding you actually want. And if you take care of these requirements early, you get to enjoy your engagement instead of rushing around with forms and attempting to beat deadlines.
The wild part about all these requirements is how dramatically different they are depending on where you live. Your best friend’s wedding experience in California could be nothing like what you go through if you tie the knot in Texas or New York. This gets even more pronounced if you have any unique circumstances. This is where professional help also proves its worth because the specifics matter quite a bit. The attorneys at LegalMatch know these state-by-state variations backwards and forwards and they can discuss your goals with you. Maybe you need help with a prenuptial agreement or you have questions about documentation for an international marriage or you just want somebody to confirm you’re doing everything right. LegalMatch connects you with a local family law attorney who can take away all that uncertainty and let you concentrate on what matters most. You can start to build your life together on a strong foundation without the legal anxiety.
