Civil annulments
A relative of mine was separated from a spouse. I’m unable to find any divorce records. How can I search to see if there was an annulment?
Answers
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What you can find will depend greatly on where and when. If the USA, laws about publicly available records vary by state.
And the when - for many years, divorce was so difficult to obtain in many locations that couples didn't even try. They simply lived apart. A friend of mine refers to that as a "sunset divorce" - as in one of the parties just rode off into the sunset.
In some locations, the records are sealed and only available to the two parties to the divorce.
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married in Texas… they both lived in Utah until death.
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I've had more success using newspapers for divorce/separation records. Often, newspapers will have a simple list of "Divorce Suits Filed" on the same page as the "Marriage Licenses Issued" and "Births Registered" columns. Exact titles vary by location, of course.
The divorce suit listing in the newspaper may be as simple as "A Smith vs M Smith."
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Oh - and divorce records are usually kept at the county level in the USA, not as state records.
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I guess I haven’t made myself clear. I have searched divorce records for the counties they lived in, and did not find any records. So now I’m assuming they weren’t divorced, but one party had the marriage annulled. And my question is… where do I find annulment records? I’m thinking they are filed in the county or district court that may require a trip to the clerk’s offices and hours of searching?
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And, I guess I wasn't clear.
Divorce records may exist, but they may not be online. Civil annulments are, as far as I'm aware, even less likely to be online.
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@Áine.ní.Donnghaile said
"A friend of mine refers to that as a "sunset divorce" - as in one of the parties just rode off into the sunset."
I jokingly refer to it as "common law divorce." 😆
@JSearle, jokes aside, depending on the time and place you're talking about, migratory divorce was also a popular solution. Divorce and associated residency laws varied widely in the U.S. Everyone knows about the Reno divorce, but for many years the easiest and quickest divorce in the country was in Alabama. There were several other states that did a brisk business in this, too. Those records wouldn't be in the local county courts where the people lived.
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