Getting married in Scotland

Anyone help with this one?... I'm british and next year my German fiancee and I intend to get married in Scotland. She needs a so-called 'certificate of no impediment', which is no problem. The question is, do I need one too? I live permanently in Germany and have done since Oct 2004. The authorities in Scotland tell me, as I'm British, I don't need this certificate of no impediment (only my passport, birth certificate and, if applicable, a divorce certificate) but the German authorities in Hamburg say I do!

If you get married in Hamburg you will need one.

But he's getting married in Scotland. He doesn't need to get married in Germany as well, does he?

Well the problem lies in where your home country is. Are you permamently resident in Germany or in the UK?
General Register Office for Scotland PDF gives information on how to get married in Scotland and what documents you need if you are not a UK citizen or not domiciled in the UK.
General Register Office for Scotland website
You'd be best to email the GRO directly - depending on where you get the certificate, there may be a time limit on it. I think you'd need one but the GRO will know for sure.
And congratulations!

@ cruiser: I (USA) was living in Germany for 12 years before I got married to a German and I still needed the frigging certificate. Get it, IIRC it's free and pretty quickly obtained.

Thanks Katrina... but I'm still confused! It appears from the GRO Scotland information that my country of domicile is what matters, not my nationality. If this is the case, then the information I was given by the GRO over the phone is incorrect even though I made it clear to them that I live in Germany.

If you got married in Germany then I can understand this, it's the law here. But this is not the case for me... I'm getting married in Scotland, because I thought the process would be much less complicated there!

I'd email them - get the answer in writing. But as sarabyrd says, it is free and will do you no harm to get it *but* check the expiry date (do you feel like a carton of milk? ha ha).
Can I be nosey? Where are you getting married?

Were they talking about your country of domicile or country of residence?

Your domicile (in tax terms anyway) usually would remain the UK even after you were resident in Germany - your country of residence is just where you spend most of your time

Ah but domicile refers to the "permament home" not the current place of residence.
It connects a person to a distinct territory with a distinct system of law.
In my case, I am British, resident in Germany but also domiciled in Germany as I have my permament home here - Germany is my domicile of choice. Were I to pay income tax, it would be payable in Germany. If (big if) I were I marry in Scotland, I would need the certificate.
Thinking of someone else on TT, say Rus for one example, he is British, has a residence in Germany but is domiciled in the UK (his main home is there) and if he pays tax (I don't know his financial situation), he would be tax-liable in the UK subject to any dual taxation clauses. If (nonsense if here as I believe him to be wed) Rus were to marry in Scotland, he would not need the certificate.
Does that make things clearer? The tax issues aren't so relevant here but I hope they help explain things.

If you are not sure if you will stay permamently or without a time limit in Germany, your domicile is that of your origin - in your case British. And this is why the GRO may think that you are not a permament resident in Germany and therefore still domiciled in the UK.

And I hope Rus doesn't mind me using him as my example.

not sure if its the same for Scotland but before I got married, my fiance (a German resident) had to 'live' at my England place for at least 14 consecutive days and visit the registrar at either end of the week to 'prove' it...

HM Revenues & Customs' view on domiciles, having read more I've edited the post above.

Then by this definition I'm domiciled in Germany too.
The certificate of no impediment may be free, but the information needed to get it is not so easy to come by. The authorities in Hamburg require my previous marriage certificate, (which I don’t have, need to get a copy) and my birth certificate (which I have) and my divorce decree nisi (which I have). But this is not all... they want these documents to be authenticated by so-called Apostles (or something like that!) for each document, which I also have to get from the UK somehow. See what I mean? ...not so simple! The main reason we decided to get married in Scotland was to avoid all this extra bureaucracy

I'd go with what the authorities in the place you are getting married tell you, since they are the ones who are doing the paperwork. It's different in every country and for every nationality. My husband needed one for us to get married in Germany, I didn't. Of course, it never hurts to have an extra bit of paper to wave in front of bureaucrats in case they get fussy, especially if you can get it easily and for free. Just for fun, the list of paperwork we needed to marry in Germany.

OK we need Jimbo or similar on this thread - this is Notary time.

Apostle vs. apostille




The Apostles being few and far between, you'll have to make do with an apostille.

Cruiser - to get rid of your domicile you have to basically cut all ties with your "original home country" - no bank accounts, no visits home etc. It's VERY difficult to do (but usually you don't even realise until you're dead and any legal wrangling starts!)

I know there may be some differences because we're not talking about tax here...but I think it all generally applies to the the way the UK government considers you.

Not nosey at all Katrina... where else but Gretna Green (the old anvil) ...we're not eloping!

I would hazarad a guess that you are still allowed visits home, you just need to make sure that you don't have a permanent residency in a legal sense.

You could always get married in NRW - they don't need that specific certificate but you may need other certificates.
You can order your marriage certificate online.
Then either see a notary or contact FCO Legalisation Office as the Embassy no longer offers notary services for UK documents.
FCO Legalisation Office website

Gretna! Awwww And afterwards you can go to the outlet stores Sorry, my family is from Dumfries so I know Gretna well. And yes I'm allowed to go back occasionally (this Hogmanay in fact).

We're exactly in the same situation, I'm German and my fiancé is English, we want to get married next year.
Have just yesterday received the certified copy of the previous marriage certificate, took a few weeks only. So not too much hassle up to now.
Still, we've been told that after all the Apostille etc. the documents need to go to Hamburg court for verification, and that may easily take 2 months...
So whenever somebody askes us WHEN we want to get married we can only shrug cos we have no clue how long that will take.
Have also talked about getting married in England
And in Danmark, that seems to be the easiest way.

Have also been told that later for the German authorities we need some certification of the marriage certificate from England, but don't know exactly yet what they need cos - of course! - it was another person in charge which had different opening hours that the Standesbeamter we had talked to...

Think if you manage to get married to a "foreigner" in Germany, that's the real proof for your relationship


Hmpf. We heard about this 14 days rule, too, but were told there's not actually a proof needed

What really annoys me, apart from the sheer AMOUNT of documents they ask for, are the opening times of the Standesamt.
Due to both of us working full-time it's not easy to get to the Standesamt during one of the small time frame of opening hours, first I wrote them a mail asking them to let me know what kind of documents we needed.
Added our details (divorced resp. unmarried, date and place of birth, nationality) - got a quite brusque reply that since we refuse to show up personally we must be aware of the fact that they can only assume what documents we need and there's no guarantee that there's not something missing in the end.
Quite threatening.
So when we decided to go there personally the guy gave us exactly the same list we had already received by mail. For this we had to go there twice as the first time they were not open, had received wrong info from the internet.

@cruiser: to which Standesamt did you go? We were in Eimsbüttel, but were told by friends (also English/German) that the documents they ask for may differ from Standesamt to Standesamt, even at the same Standesamt it's depending on the Standesbeamten (resp. the mood they are in...).

We went to Altona. They were quite helpful I guess, it's just that I was not expecting to be faced with a wall of bureaucracy in order to get married in Scotland.

You weren't expecting a wall of bureaucracy? Hahahahah, you poor naive thing. Germany isn't nearly as bad as other some other places for paperwork. No joke.

it is not as simple as that. If neither the bride or groom to be live in NRW, the applications haver to be done through the Standesamt of the town/kreis you live in. If you live in Munich, the Munich Standesamt still requires you to provide all the crap (including that stupid certificate of blah blah blah) even though little of it is required in NRW. When I got married, the Standesamt in Munich passed on a whole file to the Standesamt in Neuss, over half which went straight into the bin, and a CD-ROM which then infected their computers with a virus.

Well, they are in Hamburg and it might well be worth investigating for them.
But Gretna is better (I'm biased) - time the wedding right and they could be in sea trout season, raspberry season and catch the heather changing colours. Head out from Gretna towards Dumfries and there's a stretch of landscape that is truly spectacular, the plains roll into the Solway and it is very very beautiful. Get the sunset there and it is good for the soul.
My brother will be getting married in Sweetheart Abbey, New Abbey, near Dumfries next year (at least that was the last I heard) and my parents married in St Mary's Greyfriars 46 years ago.
All of this doesn't help with the documentation though (but I like the topic, I have a thing for wearing hats).

cruiser, you and Hammonia should meet up, seeing as you are both in Hamburg.

Not for getting married in SCOTLAND!

When my husband and I got married in Scotland (both of us are Scots) I seem to recall that the form you need to complete does ask for both parties permanent address. My husband was living in Germany at the time (I was living in Scotland) and I was going to put his German address down but noticed that if I did that, I needed to supply more information. However, as he also owned property in Scotland, I just used this address instead as it seemed less hassle. I can't remember the specifics on this though.

But to confuse matters more on residency issues, we are now in the process of getting divorced and although we spent all of our married life in Germany, we can apply for divorce either here in Germany or Scotland. Scotland also has jurisdiction as we are both Scots.

Don't know if this helps, but I would advise to get the additional piece of paper just in case there is an issue at a later date.

Unfortunately, most of these pieces of paper are valid for a limited period only, six months or something, otherwise things would be too easy.

When I got married in Scotland I didn't need the no impediment thing. There was a simple form to fill out declaring I wasn't already married to someone else and copies of birth certificates to send.

Just phone the registrar in Scotland and ask what they require from you.

As mentioned in his initial post, he did that already:

I got married in Gretna Green in 1994 for precisely the same reasons. I wanted to avoid all the German bureaucratic nonsense. As I recall I just had to provide my passport, birth certificate and divorce certificate and sign a simple document affirming that there was no legal impediment to me getting married (ie I hadn't remarried after my divorce). At the time both me and my wife(to be) were both living and working in Germany.