Did you get married in the state of Delaware in the past few years? If so, you may want to double check whether or not your wedding officiant was the real deal.
Only one state employee was in charge of registering clergy who could legally perform wedding in Delaware more than a decade ago. She kept her files on 3-by-5 index cards. But when she left her job nobody else picked up the slack, reports The News Journal.
As a result of this major state oversight, there may be thousands of people performing weddings in Delaware who are not legally registered to do so.
In New Castle County alone, there are only about 400 people in the county authorized to perform wedding, County Clerk of the Peace Kenneth Boulden told the News Journal. And yet there are more than 1,000 different people in the county who have performed weddings just last year.
"We went into my computer system. We asked how many different individuals married someone within [the county] last year,” Boulden said. “We came up with over 1,000 names."
But don’t run down your wedding official for making your children bastards just yet. Boulden said that the state will not punish couples just because the person who married them went rogue.
"They are not punished by the fact that this person didn't follow the rules, was not authorized to solemnize their marriage," Boulden said. "They are legally married in the eyes of the state."
But don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet.
Sometimes unauthorized officiants fail to send a signed copy of the marriage license to the state because they don’t want the state to know they’re not registered, says Boulden. This could create major problems for a couple years down the line because the state has no record of the marriage.
"So we have couples who come into our office for a certified copy of their record ... and we have no record of them being married," Boulden told the News Journal.
"And they said, 'But Rev. so-and-so did it.' We ask how they found him and they'll say a newspaper ad, Facebook page, whatever -- and we'll say, 'We don't know who that reverend is,' " Boulden said.
In that case, the couple must give signed affidavits from wedding witnesses and the signed license to the clerk of the peace.
To fix the current glitch for future generations of married couples, Boulden worked with local clergy to draft a bill that would re-establish the registry and regulate who's performing weddings.
Anyone wanting to perform wedding ceremonies would have to register and pay a $60 annual registration fee. The fee to perform just a single wedding would be $30.
The bill would also allow couples to find someone to marry them with a click of a mouse.
