Wood County Ohio Marriage Records

What Are Marriage Records?

Marriage Records in Wood County, OH are maintained by the County Clerk of courts along with other public records offices. Marriage records are basically kept for the purposes of genealogy and family history purposes. You can search for these records on the internet as well. There are many sites on the internet that can help you retrieve such records from Ohio’s vital statistics office or from the county clerk’s office. However you need to understand that marriage records are not classified under the category of free public records because they are not considered as an official public record.

The basic reason why these marriage records were created was to gather information regarding a person’s marital status, and this is especially important if you plan to get married again. The records contain information like the date of marriage, names of the couple, witnesses and parents etc. The information is recorded in the records for a fixed period of time, usually between the last name and first name of the couple. After the completion and filing of the petition, the certificate is given to the applicant. Therefore, it is necessary that the information is maintained for the satisfaction of people’s searches. There are instances when the petitioning party may be denied access to such records.

Today, with the availability of the internet, anyone can conduct a marriage search irrespective of whether they are located in Ohio or some other state. But since searching for records via the internet needs some expertise on your part, you need to have at least some basic knowledge about computers. It helps to make a search for records of marriage only if you already have some idea about the information you are looking for. Marriage records are divided into two main categories-the civil records and the criminal records. Each of the two has a different set of information which you need to know before conducting a search.

The first category includes all the information regarding marriage that is recorded in the court houses of the respective state. This means you will get complete information such as the date and place of marriage, names of the groom and the bride, the names of parents of the couple, witnesses at the marriage ceremony, the birth of the child who is the subject of the marriage, place of marriage and so on. There is a provision to search for records of marriage for free but the information provided by the government institutions is limited. In other words, you will not be able to obtain much information.

The second category of marriage records consists of all the information that is deemed private by the government institutions. All the personal details about a person like age, place of birth, parents and relatives are recorded and this is often referred to as the public record. However, the records of marriage in the public record are not updated regularly and thus the information from them may not be accurate. In case of marriage records, you should also be careful and conduct a comprehensive search so as to get the most recent information.

As what have been mentioned, the most recent data in relation to marriage records can always be obtained from the courts. However, these procedures are quite time-consuming and thus it’s not advised for a layman to conduct a search for marriage records. For that, one must either rely on reliable third-party resources or hire a private investigator who has the expertise to undertake such searches.