Do register offices ask for previous marriage certificates if the previous partner is dead ?

[TealMoose]

Hi all,

Long story short;

• my other half was married in a Caribbean country in 2001-ish.
• the marriage was never registered in the UK and the marriage certificate was lost in a burglary years ago.
• a few weeks later she separated from her ex-husband, who then died of a drug overdose.
• we have a copy of his death certificate from the GRO.
• BUT all our research in terms of getting a new copy of the marriage certificate suggests it's near impossible to get a copy without flying to said country and spending hours in their government offices. Seeing lots of posts of people who emailed/called/wrote to them for years and got nowhere.
• and we've got an appointment to give notice and to get married after booked for a few months from now.

So, has anyone been a similar situation who can advise if register office will care about the marriage certificate, or just that we can prove he is dead ?

We have an email from the register office which says this; no mention of previous marriage certificates.

"You may also need to bring following documents if applicable:
Any name change documents to establish your current name
A decree absolute or death certificate for any previous marriage. For a previous civil partnership we require a dissolution document
If you have any problems supplying any of the above then please do not hesitate to contact us."

Which to me suggests they'll only care about the death certificate, not the marriage one.

I kind of don’t want to reassure you as I think you should go and see them to check! But the death certificate should be enough I think. I wouldn’t just cross my fingers in the circumstances, but death supercedes anything else…

Could you not just ask the registry office directly yourself?

Could indeed, the other half doesn't want me to yet.

OK, this is the gov.uk site which says the same as the registry office email you received, I reckon, and it looks to me, as a lay-person, as if you just need the death certificate if there was no divorce.
https://www.gov.uk/marriages-civil-partnerships/documents-youll-need-to-give-notice

I remarried in Scotland. I just needed my late husband's death certificate and my husband to be needed his decree absolute. Nothing else.

If she is named on the death certificate as being his wife/widow then that should be enough.
Years ago, spouses weren't routinely named on death certificates, in which case you would need to show the registrar the death certificate and the marriage certificate to prove the link.