# USA Marriage Recognized in Mexico



## alemoo (Feb 21, 2015)

Hello,

Can someone tell me what needs to be done to get a legal marriage certificate recognized by the Mexican government?

I am a Canadian citizen.
She is a Mexican citizen.
I want to marry her in Kansas, and have the Mexican government recognize the marriage.


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

I married my Mexican husband in Canada and have never done anything special to have it registered in Mexico. When we have done _tramites_ for various things through the Mexican Consulate in Toronto, we've just had to show our certified Ontario marriage certificate. If you're getting married in the US I imagine you would need an apostilled copy of the marriage certificate. (Canada is not part of the international apostille convention, so Mexico requires the certified version of the MC for marriages which took place in Canada.)

I presume if we were doing official business in Mexico instead of at the Consulate in Toronto, we would need to have the marriage certificate officially translated.

I looked on the website of the consulate of Mexico in Kansas City, and I could not find anything stating how to register a marriage at the consulate except that the cost is $43. You might be best off contacting that consulate directly. Here is the website.

Consulado Kansas City

If you don't want to travel to Kansas City, they also offer mobile services in different towns/cities in the region by prior appointment (e.g. in Wichita, Liberal, Garden City).

Consulados Moviles y Jornadas Sabatinas

¡Felicitaciones por su matrimonio!

BTW occasionally there have been disparaging comments on the forum about Kansas. I lived there for several years. Some of the most glorious sunsets I've ever seen have been over golden wheat fields. And the stars on a clear night! When I first moved to Canada a few decades ago I was asked what I missed most about the States. Having been a prairie girl all my life, I responded "the stars". In a big city like Toronto even on a clear night you might see only about 10 stars because of our ambient light. I got some strange looks, but still when I go back for visits I try to get out to the country on a clear night just to gaze at the horizon to horizon stars.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

Yes, it will be worthwhile to get the marriage certificate apostilled and translated. You may need it for other purposes than just INM.


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## maesonna (Jun 10, 2008)

We had to bring the legalized (apostilled) marriage certificate together with a translation into Spanish done by a _perito_ translator to the Registro Civil. What you want to do is called _inscripción de matrimonio celebrado en el extranjero_.
When the process is completed, there will be a record of your marriage in the archives of the Registro Civil, and when you need one, you can get a certified copy of the certificate proving you are married, valid in Mexico, from the Registro Civil.


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## circle110 (Jul 20, 2009)

We did the exact same thing as maesonna. It was worth the very modest cost to have an official Mexican document available for things (like INM).
I did my own translation of our Texas marriage license and simply paid a small fee to a _perito_ to make it official. If your level of Spanish allows you to do that, the expense becomes minimal.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

At 200 pesos or less a pag for translation by an officia translator the expense is minimum anyways.


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## maesonna (Jun 10, 2008)

It depends where you go – we paid more like 400 pesos 15 years ago. Also, the translator may not want to put an official seal on someone else’s translation but insist on doing it themselves. 
This is what happened to us: we went to a perito translator and got the official translation. Then when we took it in, they pulled out _their_ list of peritos and he wasn’t on it (but he had been on the list of another government department, probably some INM office if I recall). So we had to get the translation redone by one of the peritos that did appear on this list.
So did the second translator accept the first translation? No, he looked over it, murmuring “This term isn’t quite… . I would have put X term here instead….” and so on. Before he would put his seal on it, he felt he had to redo the translation himself, even though the first one was also correct and done by a professional.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

I paid 200 pesos 2 years ago. for the SRE. It all depends who does it for you.


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## circle110 (Jul 20, 2009)

I called several _peritos traductores_ (making sure that they were on the most recent list from the registro civil where we were registering) and asked if they'd be willing to do that. A couple said no, but one said she'd do it if she felt my translation was accurate and she didn't have to change much. She changed a couple of words and charged us a little over a hundred pesos for those minor changes and her seal. 

I felt it was worth my time to do it, partly because it was a good work out for improving my Spanish "officialese". To top it off, I learned more still from seeing the changes that she put in. I never would have dreamed of using those terms but she said that they were the standard terms used in Mexican legalese. I didn't feel bad about being corrected because English legalese makes me crossed eyed too.


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