General Chat

Andysmum - friend did not divorce until circa 1990 so she got a fair bit of her ex's pension.

Chris, I think it was something to do with the new Graduated Pension contributions. They were introduced at the end of the 1940's, so for a couple of years, until the divorce in 1951, my mother was entitled to the extra bit on her pension. It amounted to about 6d a week!!

Andysmum - that is a surprise. I know my friend was surprised to find out when coming up to her state pension age that she could have a 'top-up' from her ex's contributions to his pension. He was deceased but neither had ever married.

She was reckoned it was the only decent thing he had ever done!

My mother used her married name all her life, and when my father died, despite the divorce and his remarriage, she was astonished to be told she was entitled to a widow's pension!!! :-0 :-0

Also it doesnt matter if a previous married woman reverts back to her maiden name,,,,,,,,if shes been previously married it will state on ehr next marriage certificate,,,,,,,unles it was an annuled marriage,

and I say again,,,,,,,,you stated they do not,,,,,,,,,,,, and I tell you they do.



either by ,
Divorced,

nowdays .
or - previous marriage Disvolved,

ask anyone on ehre whos in another marriage after a divorce what it states on their English/Welsh or Scottish marriage cert.........

I have to agree with Andysmum. Rollo is wrong - does not have to be a close relative.

I procured the marriage cert. of a marriage in I.O.W in early fifties - the husband remarried first and the details were there - previously married to xyz formerly abc divorced on such a date. The wife remarried about 4 years later and the same details quoted on her cert.

I got in touch with an office in London and can recall ordering a copy of the Decree - I rang them and asked if they could tell me the cause (in those days it was either adultery or cruelty). I was given the cause.

As for a divorcee remarrying in her previous married name - nothing strange her married name is her legal name - all her paperwork will refer to her by her married name.

Very few divorced mothers will revert to their maiden name as they wish to make life easier not more complicated for her children.

Rollo, it doesn't say Crown Copyright anywhere on either the Decree Nisi or the Decree Absolute

BUT.....it does say that on all BMD certificates!!

They might or they might not.

It is the parties getting married who fill out the form or have somebody do it and they can put anything they want on the form including "condition" and frequently do so much to the irritation of later family historians.

For many years it was a matter of law that the RO accepted whatever the marrying parties put down on the form as true. Due to abuse of process that is no longer always the case in some parts of the country but that is another matter altogether. It is also a metter of law that you cannot be asked to prove that you have never been married.

Apart from that dates of birth are often years out (esp for females), father's details wrong/made up, job description opaque, names different from birth cert and so on. Sure everything may be tickety boo at some country church or suburban RO but at a busy urban register office such as Basford or Bethnal Green nobody cared a d.and a marriage "ceremony" could be over in a few minutes using a couple of witnesses off the street.

One of my Irish rellies owned a flop house ("rookery") in St Giles from around 1870. Part f the service was providing BMD certs a la carte . Another rellie was the RO for a busy Midlands town in the C19. I have some of his diaries and they are quite funny on the subject of marriages.

No England and Wales BMD document is sure fire proof of indentity, valid marriage but simply the best/preferred information available to the informants at the time. Even a death cert can only be relied upon for the date of death and name used by the deceased when he died. My great grandfather's marriage cert is a work of fiction worthy of Chas Dickens for instance. It is far from unique.

That is why BMD documents are not good enough for inheritance of titles "of the body" but require additional evidence. More prosaically a birth cert is not enough on its own to get a new passport. It is also one reason why the digital ID scheme was scrapped.

As a general observation family historians should place a lot less trust in a mix of GRO records + census as they are full of errors and omissions both accidental and deliberate. The only BMD date on which you can usually be certain is the date of death. Records relating to money are far more reliable inc wills.

:-D

***English marriage certs will not tell you if either party was previously divorced***.
as stated by Rollo.

Rollo,,---------yes they do--------,,,,,,,,,most nowdays are,,,,,,,Dissolved,,,,,,,,,,pre late1960s it was written as.


Divorced.

By and large div.nis and sbsolute documents are not preserved with much care and are extremely unlikely to be accessible to family historians years after the event.

The marriage cert itself has no special reference whatsoever to any previous marriage. "Spinster" and "bachelor" mean whatever you want them to mean. Filling in the entry with "previous marriage dissolved, widower etc" may or may not happen, by and large not. There is no compulsion i.e. those getting married can enter their marriage state as they see fit.

By definition churches will not have any record for 2nd marriages with the notable exception of the Methodists and Quakers who will remarry divorced people.

Thus as I said researching UK divorce post 1960 within the family tree is very difficult - it is meant to be. The only easily available documents - marriage and birth certs - give few clues.

AndysMum gives the impression that the nisi/abs. details are routinely available. They are not even to close relatives. Neither are they held by some official registry from where details can be obtained. A cert. copy may be obtained from the original court but will only be granted to the divorced parties or their lawyers nobody else.

Unless a family historian is aware of some or all of the details or has access to the div. docs ( as in the case of Andys<um ) then he/she will just have to fall back on inference from the certs and possibly legal notices in newspapers or the London Gazette. Occasionally wills have details.

Other than a possible decl. of "prev. marriage dissolved" or "widower" there is nothing in the marriage cert itself which would give any information about a previous marriage other than that it is existed for those who were uber truthful.

Typically a divorced or widowed women would go on using the same surname unless she married again but not always as some choose to revert to their maiden name. If the bride's name is different on the marriage cert it may indicate she was prev. divorced or widowed. OTOH both her ex and father may have had the same name...

As has often been said on these boards it is pretty well impossible to nail down BMD facts from one reference the best option is to build up a grid of interlocking references which don't contradict each other. This is hard work and takes time but is far better than copying all sorts of noinsense from a stranger on Ancestry.

After ww1 tens of thousands of marriages had ceased to exist. Divorce was next to impossible for ordinary people and in any case they often had no idea where their ex could be found. The result was a large number of bigamous marriages few of which resulted in any kind of court action. Eventually it became a lot easier to divorce although the social opprobium remained. A lot of people just lived together without worrying about a marriage cert.

After ww2 a v large number of marriages ended for much the same reasons as in ww1 except by then divorce was much easier. That being said one of my rellies divorced a very blue blooded guy and that was not easy at all!

good luck

btw if you do get hold of a decree nisi or absolute they are Crown copyright so do not publish on fh sites etc or you will have the Queen's Proctor after you lol.

Thanks Andys mum :-D

Thanks Kay :-D

Will do some digging into the 2nd marriage certificate.

Rollo is usually very good, but on this occasion he hasn't got all his facts right.

My parents were divorced in 1951 and my father remarried in 1952. Both certificates are from England/Wales.

The Decree Absolute shows full details of the original marriage and also the reason for the divorce, including the name of the third party. The only details on the Decree Nisi that aren't included are the names of the children.

The certificate for his remarriage states "formerly the husband of X, formerly Y, spinster from whom he obtained a divorce". (X is my mother's married name and Y her maiden name,)

English/Welsh and Scotland marriage certificates do tell of any previous marriage if the person/s have been truthful..
as the or a copy of the D/Nisi has to be shown before the marriage takes place.

It clearly states.

Dissolved.

Local to area divorces were often listed in the local newspaper as and when the D/Nisi was given at the then quartley sessions of Crown,,,, Court up till the late 1960s.

Thanks Rollo, some good advice there.

Really appreciate everyone's help :-)

Divorce records post 1946 have been almost totally destroyed. Much thee same is true of coroner's records. Imho this was and is wrong.

Of course the parties concerned will have had a copy of the decree nisii. Some law firms will have archive copies on fiche back to the year dot some not. Law firms are always merging and changing so working out which law firm is not easy. Even if you have the right firm AND they have a copy record they are unlikely to grant you access without good cause and documentation.

Very often in the period 1946-1970 divorce will be reported by the press according to the level of interest a divroce may have. Thus the divorce of the queen's sister was very widely reported. Local papers will have reported thje divorce of local prominent/notorious people. Press reocrds don't disappear but digging them out can be hard work.

English marriage certs will not tell you if either party was previously divorced let alone the name of previous spouse(s). You can check for previous marriages by persons of the same name but be careful of duplicate names. The English marriage register usually has the women's name at the time of marriage so usually ( not always ) the women will remarry under the name of the guy she divorced from. I have always thought this somewhat odd.

Quite often a women getting married for a 2nd time after divorce/bereavement will use both her maiden and married names and both will appear on the GRO register. This is an error but quite helpful for family historians!

Birth certs on the other hand will have the mother's maiden name. Quite often the fathers - who were the usual informant - managed to mis spell their wife's name on the birth cert so watch out for that too.

Another gotch is that a married women may carry on with a guy and have children with him. These children will intially be registered under the name of the cuckolded husband. Later she divorces and marries the new guy/ Now they can re-register the birth under husband 2's family name! The original record is marked and cannot be used for getting passports etc. but the mark and connected record link are not visible to FH researchers using the plain GRO index.

good luck

I didn't think about his marriage certificate.

I'm not sure whether his family has one (or it's not listed)because they didn't know about the first marriage.

I'll make some subtle enquiries. I know roughly when he re-married so i can always try and get one.

Thanks Kathleen. I will send you a message :-D

The marriage should be in the marriage index. Have you looked just using his name?

If you would like to send a pm to either me or Det with the details then I'm sure we wouldn't mind having a look for you.

Could you get a copy of his marriage certificate from his second marriage? That MAY have the name of his first wife under "Marital Status". It may say something like "divorced from...name..."

Kath. x

To be honest, although the nitty gritty would be interesting, it wasn't my main interest. I just don't know where to start with finding details about a deceased relative. It's all so vague.

I know he married sometime after 1940-late 50s and he divorced before the late 50s. I think he married in WW2. We don't think it was a local wedding, we think he married in the area where his wife lived (may be Grimsby).

I know the first name of his first wife (or rather a nick name). I was told the occupation of his wife but nothing was certain.

I don't know his wife's last name. I think he adopted her child (presumably from a previous marriage) and he may have had a child with this wife but I'm not sure whether it is his or not.

Relatives that told me about this are no longer alive so I can't ask them anymore. They were very vague when I asked because they didn't know much. I think they met the wife only once.

I was hoping to track down a marriage or divorce record to try and find out a bit more.

I just didn't want to put too much details on here because it's such a sensitive subject as the children may be alive and he also had a child from a subsequent marriage.

I've never looked for living people before so it's just difficult.

Thanks Det