Your spouse cannot legally remarry until a Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage finalizing your divorce is entered in a court of law. However, we sometimes see cases where people choose to remarry anyways. If you think your spouse has remarried before your divorce has finalized, you should investigate into finding a copy of the marriage license. If they have chosen to do this, it means they would be barred from ever receiving maintenance from you. This marriage also would be considered a null marriage that gets completely voided off the record.
Additionally, if your spouse spent any money to get remarried, it would be considered ‘dissipation of the marital estate’ according to a court of law. Dissipation occurs whenever somebody has spent marital funds on something unrelated to your marriage. If your spouse is found guilty of dissipating funds, they must reimburse you for all money they spent or any assets hidden.
In cases where we believe that spouses might have married before their divorce is finalized, we begin by conducting a search for the marriage license. Once we have proof that the second marriage was finalized we can send out subpoenas looking for any records that could indicate if your spouse spent any money on the marriage. If we find any record of money spent on a marriage, your spouse would then have to pay it all back to you. Depending on how much they spent and your spouse’s income, the court might arrange for your spouse to send this sent to you in a series of payments over several months and/or years.
Marriage licenses are part of the public record, but they are not stored all in one place. To investigate how to see if someone re-married, you need to search the county records for every county you think your spouse might have been married in. Some counties will not release these records to you unless you are a lawyer. If you don’t have a lawyer, make sure to call and speak to the county first, and then consider hiring one if it is necessary.
To get the record of the marriage license, look up the address on the county website. We recommend googling the name of the county and “marriage certificate”. You can go in person to look up the records, or you can order these records by paper mail. Each county’s website should have a form that you need to fill out and send to them with a copy of the front and back of your ID. Counties will all charge a fee at various rates for a copy of the Marriage License.
Below is a table that shows the different charges in all the various counties for a marriage license in the state of Illinois as of December 2017.
| County | Fee Amount? |
| Boone | $7.00 |
| Cook | $15.00 |
| Dekalb | $5.00 |
| DuPage | $14.00 |
| Grundy | $21.00 |
| Kane | $16.00 |
| Kankakee | $10.00 |
| Kendall | $10.00 |
| Lake | $4.00 |
| LaSalle | $18.00 |
| McHenry | $12.00 |
About the Author: Russell D. Knight is a Family Law Attorney in Chicago. His office, Law Office of Russell D. Knight practice one thing, family law. By focusing on family law exclusively, Russell and his team are able to provide specific and relevant assistance to residents of Chicago in need. To learn more about Russell and his team, visit his website here or call 773-334-6311 for a confidential and no cost consultation.
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