What if your details change after lodging the NOIM?

By Sarah AirdCategories: Marriage Legalities

This entry is part 23 of 31 in the series Marriage Legalities

As we’ve outlined before, the Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) contains all sorts of personal identifying details, including your names, occupations, and home addresses. But what if any of these details change after lodging the NOIM with a celebrant? What if you change your name, change occupations, or move house?

New occupation or home address

For changes to occupation and/or place of residence, the NOIM stays the same, while the new details go on future documents. The Declaration of No Legal Impediment to Marriage (DONLIM) and the Official Certificates of Marriage (OCM) will include your updated details. Why is this?

Legal documents should be accurate at the time they are signed. They should not be altered after signing unless there is an error on them. Errors should be corrected, but we’re not talking about errors in this post. We’re talking about actual changes to the details on the document. So the NOIM was correct at the time it was signed, therefore it stays as is. The DONLIM and OCMs need to be correct when they’re signed, so they’ll have your new details.

If you move house between lodging the NOIM and getting married, please tell your celebrant.

If you change occupations, please tell your celebrant. This doesn’t mean if you get a new job doing the same thing as your last job. Your generic occupation will stay the same. But if you have a career change or a promotion and your occupation is different, we need to know.

New name

Some people change their name between lodging the NOIM and getting married. There are all sorts of reasons for this that we don’t need to get into. But names are a crucial part of a person’s identity. For that reason, if a person changes their name between lodging the NOIM and getting married, the NOIM does get updated.

Now this seems to be in direct contradiction to the point in the previous section about legal documents not being altered after they are signed unless there is an error. A name change is not an error. So why do we update the NOIM? I’ve had several robust discussions with the Marriage Law and Celebrants Section of the Attorney General’s Department about this over the years, and they continue to stick to their advice that we update the NOIM. Here’s what the Guidelines on the Marriage Act 1961 for Authorised Celebrants say:

While waiting for the formal change of name, the party may provide the NOIM to the celebrant using the name on their current birth certificate. The NOIM can then be amended once the formal change of name is obtained.

And an email I received from MLCS about this issue on 8/03/2019 says:

A party’s change of name affects a person’s identity and is relevant to a marriage celebrant’s satisfaction that the parties to the marriage are the parties referred to in the NOIM (Subsection 42(8)). Conversely, a change to the party’s address or occupation is not a matter which is relevant the solemnisation of a valid marriage.

The names on the marriage certificates should be exactly the same as the names on the NOIM.

So basically there’s just a different rule for names! It’s always best for celebrants to follow the instructions in the Guidelines 🙂

Just make sure you let us know if any of your details change after lodging the NOIM. It’s important to make sure all your documents are correct!