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Marriage/Ordinations

Mission Statement:
While the County Attorney for each individual county is the “official” legal council for their county’s local registrar and direction should always be obtained from them, this committee was established to be a sounding board for local registrars and offer options of ways to handle situations. The local registrar must realize that the final word would be up to their legal council. The purpose of this committee is to assist the Local Registrar’s within the State of Minnesota with any and all marriage issues. The committee is also responsible for any legislative changes affecting the local registrars in regards to marriages, whether it’s through seeking legislative changes or following legislation presented by others which affect marriages.

Classification of Marriage Data:

The Data Practices Act, Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, regulates the collection, creation, storage, maintenance, dissemination, and access to government data in Minnesota. The Act also establishes a presumption that all government data are public unless otherwise classified. Specifically, Minnesota Statutes, section 13.03, subdivision 1, states:

All government data collected, created, received, maintained, or disseminated by a government entity shall be public unless classified by statute, or temporary classification pursuant to section 13.06, or federal law as nonpublic or protected nonpublic with respect to data not on individuals, or with respect to data on individuals, as private or confidential.

Marriage license data are government data because they are collected and maintained by Minnesota counties. Other than an individual’s social security number, which is classified as private under Minnesota Statutes, section 13.355, marriage license data are public based on the presumption in section 13.03. In order for the data to be classified as anything other than public, there would have to be a specific law classifying the data as such.

Minnesota Marriage Fee:        Number of Marriage licenses sold 2005-2007 in MN

*In order to qualify for this Reduced Fee Marriage License the applicants must present an Educator's Statement at the time of applying for the license. The Educators Statement MUST be in the format defined by MS 517.08 Subd. 1b (c).

c) The statement from the person who provided the premarital education under paragraph (b) must be in the following form:

The names of the parties in the educator's statement must be identical to the legal names of the parties as they appear in the marriage license application. Notwithstanding section 138.17, the educator's statement must be retained for seven years, after which time it may be destroyed.