Conjugal
Status - Notice of Intended Marriage
The
Notice of Intended Marriage asks for your Conjugal
status as at the date you lodge your Notice of Intended
Marriage (duly signed and witnessed) with your
authorised celebrant. What that means is that you need to use the accepted legal term to describe your current marital status (to ensure you are legally free to marry).
When asked, most people who have never been married before, will say I’m Single, because, except for TV programs, no-one uses Bachelor, and you have to read old books to find the word Spinster (a woman who has never been married). However, on the Notice, you must write Never Validly Married. This means that you have never been married.
Why include Validly? Because it refers to marriages that are legally binding. If you have been previously married, but that marriage was annulled (or declared void) by a court of law, that marriage is considered never having been legal, and therefore, invalid (and therefore never to have occurred).
If you have registered a relationship under a state or territory scheme (whether with the person you are now marrying, or someone else) you should record record your conjugal status as Never Validly Married.
Where you have previously been validly married, and that marriage has now ended, your
conjugal status is Divorced, if your divorce is final, or Widowed, if your former husband or wife
died.
But what if you are still legally married? The good news is that you do not have to be legally free
to marry when you give Notice, though you won’t be able to be married until you are. So you can
write Married , or if you have applied for a divorce but it is not yet final, Married, Divorce Pending.