I got married in Taiwan originally. Then took the marriage certificate to the US & got re-married to the same person and had it apostilled just in case. They said this was my “second marriage.” They allowed it all. Took no time to do (same day). You may have to do your vow stuff again. I think it’s necessary by law? Dunno. Maybe it depends on the state. A US marriage with an apostille holds more weight than a Taiwanese marriage. Taiwanese marriage certificates apparently expire unless you do something to them (the US will accept the certificate, however). I don’t know the process for how to avoid this. All I remember is Taiwan not accepting its own marriage certificate because it was older than 3 or 6 months or something. Very weird.
It helps because if you do that (both people have to be present), you can divorce in the US and it has to be recognized in Taiwan if you also go through the notarization followed by apostille at the department of state + the final authentication process through TECO.
Yes, but you were trying to prove to the Taiwan government that you were married. And the Taiwan government has some weird problem where they won’t recognize their own documents so you got married again in the U.S. That’s not the same situation as Amanda who wants to get divorced.
Yes I think that’s what I’ve been saying. Taiwan will recognize a U.S. divorce. She also has to follow the laws of her U.S. state, and it can get complicated, that’s why I suggest hiring an attorney.
The big picture is: She’s living in the U.S. and doesn’t want to fly back to Taiwan for a divorce. So I say just do the divorce in the U.S., especially if she intends to stay there.
You likely mean you had another marriage ceremony? I think you cannot legally re-marry the person you are already married to unless you failed to inform the authorities of your pre-existing marriage.
Do I? I’ll reiterate what I meant: I got another marriage certificate, this time from the US instead of Taiwan. It said I’ve married again (look towards the bottom of the random pic I found below–it says the person was married one time there and mine says twice). Of course, the marriage in my case was to the same person. That’s the only way it’s legal AFAIK.
Also, every US State has different rules as it pertains to divorce. Some States require both parties to be residents of the specific State in which they intend to get divorced.
Back in the 80s-90s this was true for Hawaii, although I don’t have any recent information. Back in the day, BOTH parties had to be residents to divorce. And you couldn’t just arrive and say you were a resident. You actually had to establish and prove residency. It was a major PIA for military members.
OP needs to check the relevant State law regarding the divorce requirements as it pertains to residency.
Also, no need to register anything in the US. You were married legally in Taiwan, then you’re legally married in the US. No centralized marriage system exists in the US federal system.
Not true? Then explain to me why TECO refused to process my JFRV on the grounds that the certificate was too old. Because that’s exactly what happened. They required me to get a new one in Taiwan and have it go through a bunch of stamps and other things. It was much easier to use the apostilled US certificate instead.
If you marriage certificate had expired then so did your marriage. This did not happen. Teco requires documents to be notarized within a short period of time. They don’t accept a document notarized years ago.
Ok, I do not know what happened. So you managed to do this without proving you were single? So the previous marriage was actually your existing (foreign) marriage? Interesting.
I also had to get remarried once I got to Taiwan. (to the same person). We had our marriage certificate from the States, but was told it would be just easier for us to get remarried in Taiwan for some reason.
I’m assuming you mean I need proof of being single to marry in Taiwan? If anything we were trying to prove that we were already married by showing our marriage certificate from the US. But that wasn’t good enough or there was some additional hoops that we would have to jump though to accomplish what we were doing at the time. They easy solution was just to remarry in Taiwan.
Yes that. So I guess I am wrong about not being allowed to re-marry the same person you are already married to. I guess that is allowed at least in parts of the US and Taiwan, based on what I am reading.
The US doesn’t have a universal registry on being single, so Taiwan doesn’t require anything from the US.
You must have it apostilled and then authenticated by TECO. Without that, it’s impossible. I had to do that with all my US documents when I left the US. I had to do the same for documents issued to me back in the EU as well. It was so NOT easy that I had to do a power of attorney and have a person run between government departments and TECO (luckily the country I had this done in had a TECO). Real royal pain in the ass when it came to needing to change my nationality on my marriage certificate and needing to change my name.
Example of process:
name is changed, document is given by government
changed name document needs to be notarized
document needs to be apostilled
document needs to be translated
translation needs to be notarized
translation needs to be apostilled
original & translation need to be authenticated by TECO
NOW both documents are ready for use in Taiwan
Now imagine doing all of that as well as various school transcripts, marriage certificates, and citizenship papers. I had a lot of fun as you can tell.
It’s also a bit of a pain because you need to get a county notary to notarize the original document. In my case with my high school diploma, I had to hire a notary to actually come with me to the school because no one at the school had any idea wtf I was trying to do. Apparently I was the first one in history to have that done, lol. College was a little easier since they had a notary on campus.
