Home / Divorces / How to find out whether a person is divorced or not?
Expert opinion
Dmitry Nosikov
Lawyer. Specialization: family and housing law.
Question.
Please tell me, is there any single database in Russia that can be used to find out whether a person is officially divorced or not? If not, how is it possible to find out whether we were scammed or not?
Answer.
Firstly, if the divorce took place without your participation, then you should have been sent a copy of the court's divorce decision. If this does not happen, there are several options to find out the solution:
- You need to submit a written application to the court that heard the case;
- try calling the court - the secretary or assistant of the judge who was hearing the case;
- try to find information about your divorce case on the official website of this court.
Secondly , at the moment there is no such base in the Russian Federation. It is impossible to check whether a divorce has taken place via the Internet. In addition, finding out whether a person is married is not included in the list of electronic services of the registry office. We’ll talk about ways to find out this moment later.
When is a marriage considered dissolved? How to find out the date of divorce?
Some spouses believe that the moment of divorce is when they receive a divorce decree or a divorce certificate. However, it is not.
According to the law, a marriage is dissolved from the moment the civil registry office makes an appropriate entry in the civil register. Confirmation of the termination of the marriage relationship is the issuance of a divorce certificate against signature.
Even if there is already a court decision on divorce, but no changes have been made to the registration book, the family continues to exist. The moment of receiving the divorce certificate also does not matter - it only serves as confirmation of the fact of divorce. One of the spouses may not have this document at all. But it is impossible to prove that the marriage is dissolved without it. Without it, many other things are impossible.
What to do if there is no divorce certificate?
Divorce and divorce certificate. What to do if there is no divorce certificate?
Documentary evidence that the marriage between the spouses is dissolved is a certificate of divorce.
Information about this may be required in a variety of life circumstances:
- entry of one of the spouses into a new official marriage;
- purchase or sale of real estate;
- leaving for permanent residence in another state;
- change of surname;
- adoption of a child.
But if you don’t have such a certificate, you don’t have a stamp in your passport, and you have no idea about your own marital status?
The only legal way to reliably find out whether a marriage has been dissolved is to submit a written application to the registry office . Having received the corresponding application, the civil registry office staff provides the applicant with the necessary information, issues a certificate or issues a duplicate of the divorce certificate.
Note! It is impossible to obtain official information about whether a stranger’s marriage has been registered or dissolved. The civil registry office provides information and issues documents on marriage or divorce only to the person who applies for them.
Need for clarification
How to find out via the Internet whether your wife has filed for divorce
You can also find out more information via the Internet. To do this, check your spouse’s social network pages, interview relatives or friends. Information is often displayed if you enter your spouse's name and divorce into an online search. Here you can find both true information and gossip regarding this topic.
In fact, the law does not have the concept of a secret or emergency divorce. Hearings are public in nature and this is dictated by current legislation.
Dear readers! The article talks about typical ways to resolve legal issues, but each case is individual. If you want to find out how to solve your particular problem , contact a consultant:
Find out if the divorce took place through the registry office
According to the Family Code, a marriage can be dissolved through the registry office only on the basis of mutual consent of the spouses. Therefore, a divorce through the registry office could not take place without your consent.
there are exceptions to this rule . The registry office may dissolve a marriage on the basis of a unilateral application from one of the spouses if the second spouse is sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 3 years or more, is declared dead or missing. Therefore, theoretically, there is a possibility that the marriage was dissolved through the registry office unilaterally.
To find out for sure, you should contact the central registry office:
- the city in which the marriage was registered;
- cities in which each spouse is registered.
The application must be accompanied by a marriage certificate and asked to provide information on whether a divorce has been registered between these persons.
If the divorce is registered, you should apply for the re-issuance of a divorce certificate - it will be documentary evidence of the divorce.
Find out if a person is divorced through the court
The marriage could also be dissolved through the courts. And if the plaintiff did not have information about the location of the defendant, notices of the divorce proceedings were sent to the place of his last residence. Without receiving a response from the defendant, the court could dissolve the marriage at the request of the plaintiff (see “If the defendant does not appear in court for divorce”).
To find out whether a marriage was dissolved in court without the knowledge of one of the spouses, you should submit a request to the judicial authority at your place of residence and at the place of residence of your spouse (he could have grounds to file applications at his own place of residence).
Even if a court decision on divorce has already been made, this does not mean that the marriage is dissolved. After all, from the moment the court decision is made to the moment the divorce is registered in the registry office, a certain amount of time may pass:
- 3 days after the court decision enters into legal force, the court will send an extract from this decision to the registry office for registration;
- the spouse who has received an extract from the court decision must contact the registry office to register the divorce and obtain a certificate.
Only at the moment the divorce is entered into the register of deeds is the divorce considered officially completed. Based on this entry, the spouses are issued a divorce certificate.
Information about the property of an individual from the Unified State Register
There is no optimal way to find out what property a person has.
You will have to contact several authorities, make different requests, and collect a complete picture from fragmentary information. The first step you can take is to contact the Unified State Register of Rights. Let’s assume a situation where the wife found information about the ex-husband’s ownership of an apartment that he bought during the marriage. Such housing for divorced partners is considered jointly owned and must be divided. A similar situation may arise in the event of the death of a relative. One of the heirs may suspect that part of the property of a deceased relative is being hidden from him.
The extract contains the following information:
- type of real estate;
- date of registration of property;
- cadastral number;
- condition of property: presence of encumbrances or other restrictions on use.
The certificate is valid for 30 days from the date of issue. The certificate itself is issued within 3-5 days after the documents are accepted.
The certificate can be issued by contacting the Unified State Register directly or sending a request through the State Services portal or to the MFC. This information is publicly available and can be obtained by any citizen. Please note that in this way you can determine what property the owner owns, and not who is the owner of a particular object.
How to find out if a person is married?
Some people are interested not only in their own marital status, but also in information about the marital status of other people. And it's not always just curiosity.
Let's say a man and a woman want to get married. But one of them is tormented by doubts about the presence or absence of previous official relations. Was he married? If so, will this marriage be dissolved? Agree, this is important.
Expert opinion
Semyon Frolov
Lawyer. 7 years of experience. Specialization: family, inheritance, housing law.
As already mentioned, it is impossible to contact the registry office with a request about the presence or absence of marriage or divorce of an outsider (even if it is a close person). No registry office will provide such information. What else can be done?
- With a certain level of trust in each other, it will not be shameful to ask for documents - a passport, a divorce certificate.
- If there is neither a passport nor a divorce certificate (or the person says that there are none), invite him to obtain or restore documents confirming the absence of marriage.
- Become a “detective” - talk to neighbors, friends, acquaintances of the person whose marital status you are interested in. Don't ignore such a valuable source of information as social networks. It is difficult to hide the fact of marriage or divorce from the public.
- Contact the detective. There are private detective agencies that have ways to obtain any official information.
Do not trust suspicious online database services that offer to provide all the information about any person for a fee. Most likely, these are scammers. And the relevance of the information is unlikely to be accurate.
The main difficulties arise in divorces without the presence of one of the spouses.
The second one may doubt whether they were scammed or not? Many people do not attach importance to the fact of divorce. However, this can become a serious problem later. For example, in case of inheritance, new marriage or debt collection. It is better to find out about your status immediately. Thinking about this later, when there is no time or opportunity to come to the desired registry office, is irrational. Still have questions or need legal advice? Leave questions on the website or call. Attention!
- Due to frequent changes in legislation, information sometimes becomes outdated faster than we can update it on the website.
- All cases are very individual and depend on many factors. Basic information does not guarantee a solution to your specific problems.
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Author of the article
Irina Garmash
Family law consultant.
Author's rating
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612
Wrong stereotypes
There are several signs of a married man that any woman considers herself an expert on. But sometimes the eyes lie, and the signs do not always indicate a man’s marital status.
It is clear that if a man wears a wedding band, then he is actually married and does not hide it. But sometimes it happens that there is no ring, but the mark remains - either white, after tanning the brush, or simply “convex”, clearly visible on the skin.
Many women, having seen this trail, can say with certainty: the man is married. But there is no ring because:
He took it off while he was “picking” the girls.
I took it off and lost it, so I don't wear it.
I took it to a pawnshop to show off the rent.
He is embarrassed to wear, posing as a bachelor.
To find out, you don’t have to immediately ask about this evidence. You can simply ask about a man’s personal life without saying that you noticed this trace.
An honest man can tell you that yes, he was married, I confess, but everything is in the past, look, the “scar” from the ring has not yet healed.
A married person will begin to “drive” that he is free in life. And if after that you ask him a question about the trace of the ring, then perhaps this will throw him into a stupor.
For some reason, a stereotype has developed that if a man looks “sparkling,” then his wife must have worked on his appearance. And a bachelor should look like a vakhlak - dressed sloppily, and also behave accordingly.
No, this is not how modern machos look now, especially if they are single. On the contrary, ladies' men and metrosexuals are dressed with special chic and gloss. The main thing is that when you meet such a handsome guy, you don’t confuse him with a guy of the wrong orientation.
Therefore, when you meet someone based on their clothes, there is no absolute certainty that this neat guy is a married man. Rather, on the contrary, a family man, tormented by daily problems, may look a little more shabby than a bachelor.
Calls and conversations on the phone are what can reveal a married man who is hiding his marital status from you. Such a man will act as if he is a CIA agent.
He can easily either talk to someone about business in front of you, or leave the room when a certain call comes. Or he will drop calls altogether, and then turn off the phone altogether.
The man himself will call you at a certain time during the day, most likely it will be weekdays. But as soon as you call him in the evening, you won’t recognize him: he either speaks in a whisper, or in some kind of riddles, or doesn’t answer at all.
The same trick happens with SMS messages; they are answered only during business hours. For any questions about why this is happening, there will be a thousand excuses: tired, asleep, forgot, didn’t hear, there was no time, and so on.
It will be difficult to discern from his phone book whether he is married or not. If he is married, then his wife will be recorded with a simple name from a dozen or hundreds of other subscribers and will not be specifically designated in any way.
If you are having an affair with a married man, and you don’t know whether he has a spouse or not, ask him to write down your name in a very affectionate way. If he writes it down, then the next day your name in the phone will again “sound” dry and official. So he's married.
A married man will never invite you to his home and will not even tell you the exact address. He will supposedly be constantly renovating his apartment, and his Cerberus mother will be sitting in the hallway. He will laugh off any attempts to find out his address.
But you can understand that he is married, but is hiding it from you, by some unpleasant little things.
The holidays will be torture for you. Since he supposedly celebrates them only with his mother and his relatives, where his girlfriend is still off limits.
He will not introduce you to his family or friends, he will not take you as a girl to a corporate or friendly party. You will always be in the shadows.
You may know his two or three true friends, no more. But they won’t give you all the information about him.
Even in the interior of his car there is a sense of “family spirit.” Plush toys, ladies' "tricks" in the form of lipstick or hairpins.
He does not like to be photographed, explaining that he is not photogenic. He covers himself in the photo like Ostap Bender with a chessboard.
He can be generous, but he is careful - he does not give “general” gifts, such as cinema or theater tickets. In general, he tries not to appear together in public.
He allocated time for you. You meet only when he wants (and in fact, when he can). For other times, he is a “busy man.”
He doesn't stay overnight. And if he stays all weekend, he turns off his phone. Like, there is no need to interfere with us. Apparently, he is on a business trip for his wife.
He refuses gifts. Like he doesn’t like them and all that. And in general, there is no need to spend money on him, he himself is quite wealthy. But in fact, how will he explain these gifts to his wife?
It is from these little things that you can understand that this man is hiding one thing - his marital status. And he is no CIA agent.
