Documents to provide to your celebrant

By Sarah AirdCategories: Marriage Legalities

This entry is part 27 of 31 in the series Marriage Legalities

There’s a bunch of documents you have to provide to your celebrant before you can get married in Australia:

evidence of date and place of birth (generally a passport or birth certificate)
evidence of identity (generally a passport or driver’s licence)
evidence of the end of your previous marriage (if relevant – generally a divorce or death certificate).

It’s easiest to provide these documents when you lodge your Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) with your celebrant; that’s certainly my preference. However that’s not a requirement. As long as you provide the documents to your celebrant before the marriage, it’s all good!

If you want more information on the requirements, here’s a rundown!

Evidence of date and place of birth

The first one is evidence of your date and place of birth. Section 42(1)(b) of the Marriage Act 1961 clearly outlines which documents we can see for this purpose:

a birth certificate or extract (from Births, Deaths and Marriages in the State/Territory/country in which you were born)
a passport (Australian or overseas)
in exceptionally special circumstances, a statutory declaration.

For each document you can provide either an original hard copy or an electronic photo or scan of the original.

It doesn’t matter if your passport is expired. Your date and place of birth don’t change, even if your document is out of date 🙂

Statutory declarations

A statutory declaration can only be provided in circumstances where it is impossible to obtain a birth certificate or passport, such as:

if you came to Australia as a refugee
if you are from a war-torn country and the building that housed the birth certificates has been bombed and literally no longer exists
if you are a First Nations person who was born in a remote Indigenous community and your birth was never registered with the government.

These are examples of the types of circumstances that would allow you to provide a statutory declaration in place of a birth certificate or passport as evidence of your date and place of birth.

Unfortunately there’s no other reason for which you can use a statutory declaration. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to take time or cost money to get a birth certificate or passport. If it’s possible to get one or the other, you have to, no way around it. If you can’t find your birth certificate or passport and you’re planning to get married, get onto getting a new one ASAP!

Evidence of identity

Section 42(8)(a) of the Marriage Act tells us that we (the celebrant) have to be satisfied that the people we’re marrying (you) are the people named on the NOIM. The easiest way to do that is for us to sight a form of photo ID that has the same name as on the NOIM, and a photo of you.

Unlike with evidence of date and place of birth, the Marriage Act doesn’t actually tell us which documents we need to see to fulfil this requirement. The latest Guidelines on the Marriage Act 1961 for Authorised Celebrants tell us that best practice is for us to see a form of government-issued photo ID, such as a:

passport (Australian or overseas)
driver’s licence
proof of age card.

And remember the photo should actually look like you; it’s no good giving me a passport from when you were five years old 🙂 I need to see a recent form of photo ID.

I need to be able to compare the photo ID to your face, so you can either show it to me over Zoom, bring it to a meeting with me, or email me a photo or scan that I can bring up on my phone when we meet.

Passports are great because they cover both evidence of date and place of birth AND evidence of identity!

What if I don’t have photo ID?

Now some people don’t have photo ID, and that’s okay. The Guidelines tell us that we can accept a bunch of other evidence of your identity. They recommend government-issued documents such as a Medicare card, a letter from the Australian Tax Office or Centrelink, or a rates notice. I’d also be happy to see utility bills and/or bank statements. I personally would want to see 100 points of evidence if you weren’t able to provide photo ID.

Evidence of the end of your previous marriage (if relevant)

If you’ve been married before, you need to prove to me that you’re free to marry now, i.e. that you’re no longer married to your former spouse. According to section 42(10) of the Marriage Act, you do this by providing me with appropriate evidence, such as a:

divorce certificate
death certificate of your former spouse (from Births, Deaths and Marriages in the State/Territory/country in which they died)
nullity order (if your marriage was deemed void by a court of law – not a religious annulment).

Again, these documents can be provided to me in their original hard copy form, or as an electronic photo or scan of the original. Australian divorce certificates have only been issued electronically since 2011, so you can just show or email me the PDF.

In 9.5 years and almost 500 weddings, I’ve never seen a nullity order. It’s pretty rare for people to have their marriages annulled by a court in Australia. I’m sure it will come up one day!