Marriage license retrieval from 1999

Hello irishpiet,

I find it extremely unusual that the valid Marriage Certificate would not be valid for any legal purposes (worldwide) since the very existance of a certificate verifies that the requisite capacity to marry was met. Unless somebody is claiming that some kind of fraud was perpetrated at the time the Marriage License was applied for and that there was some existing impediment to marriage that was not disclosed there should be no question whatsoever. Since a Marriage Certificate supercedes a license that document is generally archieved in any nation and is thus unretrievable the Marriage Certificate should suffice for any legal purpose. Have you checked with a lawyer experienced in family law in your country? I would suggest that you do so. If there is any chance at all of recoverning the original Marriage License (which I higly doubt) that could only be done through the Registry where it was issued in Reykjavik. Was there some chance that a legal impediment to marriage existed? Were either you or your late spouse previously married in some other country and that marriage was not disolved judicially? The reason I am asking is because I find the situation so completely unusual.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

the Syslumaður in Reykjavík seems like the most likely source for this info. They handle various kinds of civil paperwork so they could be worth contacting:

http://syslumadur.is/Default.aspx?id=41&cmd=menu

wjwoodward wrote:

Hello irishpiet,

I find it extremely unusual that the valid Marriage Certificate would not be valid for any legal purposes (worldwide) since the very existance of a certificate verifies that the requisite capacity to marry was met. Unless somebody is claiming that some kind of fraud was perpetrated at the time the Marriage License was applied for and that there was some existing impediment to marriage that was not disclosed there should be no question whatsoever. Since a Marriage Certificate supercedes a license that document is generally archieved in any nation and is thus unretrievable the Marriage Certificate should suffice for any legal purpose. Have you checked with a lawyer experienced in family law in your country? I would suggest that you do so. If there is any chance at all of recoverning the original Marriage License (which I higly doubt) that could only be done through the Registry where it was issued in Reykjavik. Was there some chance that a legal impediment to marriage existed? Were either you or your late spouse previously married in some other country and that marriage was not disolved judicially? The reason I am asking is because I find the situation so completely unusual.

Cheers,
William James Woodward - Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team

Yes, I totally agree with you, and my first reaction was to contact the officer from the department requiring this, her explanation was (after I brought it to her attention that Iceland is in the EU, and the same laws would apply here) that the department she works in has to be convinced that there was no possible way for fraud, so it is up to me to prove this!
Naturally as stated above, before we got married, we both got (that time) our clearances from our home country's.
So now I am faced with this, trying to get the information back, we send to Iceland 14 years ago...

Cheers, Piet.