How to Find out if Someone Was Married in Connecticut
If you just got engaged or started dating someone you met online, you probably want to confirm that your partner isn’t married or hiding a prior marriage. Or maybe you’re just looking to research your family history and want to find out who your long lost second cousin married. Many companies charge for this information, but you can sometimes access it for free or a small fee using the below methods:
RootsWeb – Free database of records created by the members of an online genealogy community, containing more than 600,000 marriage records. To search for a record, you must input the last name of one of the involved parties; first name, state and year of marriage are optional fields.
USA People Search Marriage Records – Database of marriage records compiled from government agencies for 14 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Utah, West Virginia. You have to pay to view detailed records, but the search results page, which is free to access, shows marriage record titles, which can be enough to confirm if someone was married, particularly if that person has a unique name. Note that the records for Connecticut span 1966-2002 only. To search for a record, you must input one of the following: the name of one party or the city or state where the marriage occurred.
Since neither of the above online databases is comprehensive, you may not be able find records of a marriage even though it did occur. Another approach is to request this information from the state or town or city where the event occurred. In some states you can only obtain your own marriage records but, in Connecticut, anyone over the age of 18 can request a copy of any Connecticut marriage or civil union certificate. You have three options to find records of marriages occurring after 1897, but you must know the names of the bride and groom and the city and date of the marriage:
Option A – Request the record from Connecticut’s State Vital Records Office in person or by mail for $10 per copy. To make a request, you must fill out the relevant form:
Marriage record request
Civil union record request
Note that this can be a VERY slow process. Turnaround time for requests through the mail currently take more than four months.
Option B – Request the record directly from the town or city vital records registrar where the event occurred for $10 per copy. This is faster than requesting the record from the state, but processing times vary by town or city. To make a request, you must fill out the relevant form:
Marriage record request
Civil union record request
Option C – Request the record online from VitalCheck. Processing time is 5-7 days, and the fee for the first copy is $22.95 ($10 per copy plus a processing fee).
For records of marriages occurring before 1897, you’ll likely have to do some onsite research. You can contact the Connecticut State Library’s History and Genealogy Unit at (860) 757-6580 to see if they will research a small request for you, or else visit the library at 231 Capitol Avenue in Hartford. The state library houses the Barbour Collection, which includes most Connecticut vital records to about 1850, as well as the Connecticut vital records that have been microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, which includes most records to about 1900. The vital records microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah can also be accessed at a local Genealogical Society of Utah Family History Center.
If the above methods are too time-consuming or you don’t have all the information required to make a request, the fastest approach is to hire a private investigator. Private investigators have access to background information databases including marriage records and can quickly do the research for you.
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Best,
Jill
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