State not providing Re-Issued Marriage Certificate

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa 🇵🇹
1

Hey All,

My husband and I are in the process of compiling our documents for the GV application with help from our attorney. I’m in Washington state, and we’re stuck on the requirement to have our marriage certificate re-issued with current date.

I went through the Vitalchek process to get an official copy of our original certificate from 2019 and had that apostilled, but once I sent it to our lawyer they said AIMA would reject it because it was not re-issued/no re-issue date was provided.

I called Vitalchek and they said that this is basically all they are able to get from WA state, but that I can call the WA Sec. of State to see if there is another option. I’ve seen an example provided by my lawyer from CA, where there is a stamp noting that the copy is a “true and exact” copy of the original with a re-issue date on the stamp itself. Doesn’t sound like WA provides this though.

Has anyone else run into this problem? If so, how did you navigate? My intention is to get a notary to notarize a document my husband and I write/sign asserting that we are married as of the current date, but I’m not sure if AIMA will accept this either. My lawyer has not provided feedback yet on that, so thought I’d post here.

Thanks!

2

Yes marriage and birth certs from California are clearly marked as copies with the copy issue date being later than the original document date.

  1. Have you tried contacting / checking the website of the specific county where you were married? Maybe you can request your records from them directly by mail. For example see King County’s website: Request a copy - King County, Washington it seems that King County attaches certification stamps that contain the date the copy is certified: Request a copy - King County, Washington
  2. Have you tried calling/emailing the CHS directly using the contact details at the bottom of this page? Vital Records | Washington State Department of Health
  3. Otherwise I recommend asking on the FB group, Americans and Friends PT. There are probably many Washingtonians there.