Vermont Marriage and Divorce Records: How to Get a Copy

Vermont is unusual in a quiet way: it restricts who can order a birth or death certificate, but it does not apply that same relationship gate to marriage, civil union, divorce, and dissolution certificates. The result is a genuinely easy record to obtain, at $10 per certified copy, from a town clerk, the Department of Health, or the state archives.

Information last verified on 2026-08-04. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This page covers Vermont records. For the substantive law on grounds, residency, and property division, see Vermont divorce laws.

Who Holds Vermont Marriage and Divorce Records

Three offices can give you a certified copy, and which one you use depends mostly on the date of the event.

The town or city clerk where the marriage license was issued holds the local copy. Vermont town clerks are authorized to issue certified copies of vital records, including birth, death, marriage, and civil union certificates. For anyone physically in Vermont, this is normally the fastest and cheapest route.

The Vermont Department of Health's Vital Records Office in Waterbury issues certified copies of marriage, divorce, and civil union dissolution certificates for events from 2024 to the present, and civil union dissolutions for all years.

The Vermont State Archives and Records Administration (VSARA), under the Secretary of State, handles certificates dated before 2024, and is also where genealogical vital-records research runs.

Pro tip: The 2024 cutoff is the single most common reason a Vermont order comes back rejected. If the wedding or divorce was in 2023 or earlier, do not use the Health Department form. Go to VSARA or the town clerk instead.

What It Costs and How to Order

Fee. $10.00 per certified copy. Ordering through the state's online vital-records service adds a processing fee of roughly $2.00 to the order, so budget about $12.00 for a single online copy.

Channels.

• In person at a town or city clerk's office, for the town where the license was issued.
• Online, through the state's vital-records request service.
• By mail, using the Health Department's marriage, divorce, and dissolution application, sent to the Vital Records Office, 280 State Drive, Waterbury, VT 05671-8370, with a check or money order payable to the Vermont Department of Health and a self-addressed envelope.
• Through VSARA, for anything dated before 2024.

The Health Department's phone lines are 802-863-7275 and, within Vermont, 800-439-5008.

What the form asks for. Both parties' names, the date of the marriage or divorce, the number of copies, your relationship to the person named on the certificate, and the purpose of the request. Purpose options on the form are ordinary administrative ones such as passport, Social Security, school enrollment, driver's license, and family history. The department is not gathering a legal justification there; it is collecting workload data and a routing hint.

Vermont's ordering pages do not name VitalChek as the state's channel, unlike several neighboring states. Use the state's own service, the town clerk, or VSARA rather than a third-party ordering site.

Marriage and Divorce Are Treated Differently From Birth and Death

This is the fact worth carrying away from the page.

Vermont's ordering guidance states plainly that only family members, legal guardians, certain court-appointed parties, or their legal representatives can apply for a certified copy of a birth or death certificate. That sentence is scoped to births and deaths. The department's marriage, civil union, divorce, and dissolution material carries no parallel eligibility clause, and the application form asks about your relationship and purpose without conditioning issuance on either.

The honest way to state that is by what the official pages contain rather than by inference: no relationship-based eligibility restriction appears on the pages and forms Vermont publishes for marriage, civil union, divorce, and dissolution certificates, while a clear one appears for birth and death. If you are researching a record you have no obvious connection to, expect the clerk to process the request, and be ready to explain the purpose the form asks about.

For the far stricter rules on the other side of that line, see Vermont death records.

Getting the Divorce Order Itself

The Health Department's divorce certificate confirms that a divorce or dissolution happened. It does not contain the terms.

The divorce order, the parenting plan, the property division, and the rest of the case file sit with the family division of the Vermont Superior Court in the county where the case was decided. Vermont reorganized its trial courts into a single Superior Court with divisions, so what older sources call the family court is now the family division of the Superior Court in that county. That is the office to contact for a certified copy of the order, for an enforcement question, or to read what a judge actually decided.

Vermont's Rules for Public Access to Court Records set the framework. The rules are to be construed liberally to provide access to judicial-branch records while protecting confidentiality where a statute, rule, or court order requires it. Family division cases carry real exceptions inside that framework: financial affidavits filed in family cases are not publicly accessible, and records from a juvenile proceeding that are filed or admitted into evidence in a divorce or parentage case do not become public by virtue of being filed there.

The practical expectation, then, is that you can normally see the docket and the order while the financial and child-related material behind it may be closed.

If you are pursuing a record as a general requester rather than a party, see Vermont public records laws for how the state's access statute works.

Civil Unions and Dissolutions

Vermont created civil unions in 2000 and stopped issuing new ones after marriage became available to same-sex couples, but the records did not disappear and neither did the dissolutions. The Health Department's marriage and divorce application explicitly covers civil union dissolution certificates for all years, which is a narrow but genuine exception to the 2024 cutoff that governs marriage and divorce certificates.

If you are trying to document a civil union itself rather than its dissolution, the town clerk that issued the license remains the primary local custodian, with VSARA holding the archival copy.

When There Is No Record to Find

Vermont does not recognize common-law marriage. That has a direct records consequence that trips people up: if a couple never obtained a license, no marriage certificate exists anywhere in Vermont, and no amount of searching will produce one. The background is in Vermont common-law marriage.

For the same reason, a Vermont search that returns nothing is sometimes a correct result rather than a failed one. Before concluding that a record is missing, confirm the town where the license was issued and check whether the event predates 2024, which sends the request to VSARA instead.

Related Guides

To compare Vermont with other states, use the marriage and divorce records by state hub. For a general walkthrough of the ordering process, see how to get a copy of your marriage certificate, and for the marital-status question specifically, how to find out if someone is married or divorced.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about Vermont marriage, civil union, and divorce records, verified against official sources on 2026-08-04. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Fees, forms, and year cutoffs change; confirm current details with the Vermont Department of Health, VSARA, or the relevant town clerk before sending payment. For advice about a specific situation, consult a lawyer licensed in Vermont.

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Last updated: 2026-08-04.