What is a single status affidavit, and who apostilles it?

A single status affidavit is a sworn statement, signed in front of a notary, that you are legally free to marry. Because it is a notarized document rather than a government record, it is apostilled by the Secretary of State of the state where that notary holds their commission — not the state you grew up in, not the one your family lives in now.

The United States has no national marriage registry. Marriage records sit with states and counties, so no federal office can look you up and certify that you are unmarried. That is why US citizens cannot obtain the certificate of no impediment that most civil-law registries expect, and why the substitute is a self-declared affidavit backed by a notary’s seal and an apostille.

This matters more than it sounds. The apostille is not certifying that you are single. It is certifying that the notary who watched you sign was a real, currently commissioned official of that state. The receiving registry treats the affidavit as your sworn word, and the apostille as proof that the signature-witnessing was genuine.

If you sign your affidavit in front of a notary in the country where you live, no US Secretary of State can apostille it. An apostille must come from the competent authority of the country whose official signed the document — a US state can only certify officials commissioned under its own law. A foreign notary’s seal sent to a US state is returned unprocessed, and you will have paid for international shipping twice to learn that.

Where can you sign it if you are already living overseas?

You have three workable routes, and they lead to three different apostille authorities. Pick the route first, because it determines everything downstream.

Sign before a US-commissioned notary

If you are travelling to the US, or a US-commissioned notary is reachable where you are, this is the cleanest path. The affidavit then goes to that notary’s state Secretary of State. Some states authorise their notaries to perform remote online notarization for signers located abroad; whether the destination registry accepts a remotely notarized affidavit is a separate question and worth asking before you rely on it.

Sign before a US consular officer

Many US embassies and consulates offer notarial services to citizens. A consular officer is a federal official, so the resulting document is outside any state’s authority — authentication of a consular seal is handled federally in Washington, DC. Two things to confirm before booking: that the post in question actually offers notarial appointments, and that the receiving registry accepts a consular-notarized affidavit. Not every registry does, and some insist on a state-issued apostille specifically.

Use a local notary and a local apostille

If the country you live in is itself a Hague party, a document notarized there can be apostilled by that country’s competent authority. This is sometimes acceptable where you are marrying in a third country. It is never acceptable as a substitute for a US apostille when the registry has asked for a US document.

Which documents does the registry actually want?

There is no universal list, because the list is written by the foreign registry, not by any US agency. Get it in writing from the registrar, town hall, or civil status office where the ceremony will be recorded. That said, the combination below covers what most civil-law jurisdictions ask an American for.

Notice how the birth certificate column works. If you were born in Texas, lived in Virginia, and now live in Lisbon, the birth certificate is apostilled in Austin and nowhere else. A notarized affidavit signed before a Virginia notary is apostilled in Richmond. Two documents, two states, two separate filings. We handle each at the same flat $120 per apostille, all-inclusive — the state’s filing fee is covered by that price, not added to it.

If a residence permit or marriage visa follows the wedding, the list typically grows: an FBI Identity History Summary, sometimes an IRS Form 6166 tax residency certificate, occasionally a Social Security benefit verification letter, a diploma for a skilled-worker track, or a power of attorney so a relative can act for you in the US. All of the federal ones take the Washington, DC route. The power of attorney and the diploma are state documents.

How recent does each document have to be?

No US authority puts an expiry date on an affidavit or an apostille. Once issued, an apostille is valid indefinitely as far as the United States is concerned. The clock is entirely the foreign registry’s invention, and it is real: short windows on single status affidavits and police certificates are standard practice in civil-law countries.

Ask the registry two questions, and get the answer in writing:

• How long is it valid? Windows of three or six months are common, but the only number that matters is the one that office uses.
• Which date does the clock run from? The notarization date, the apostille date, or the date you file? These can be weeks apart once international shipping is involved, and registries genuinely differ on which one they count.

That second question is the one almost nobody asks and the one that sinks the most files. If the window runs from notarization and the envelope spends three weeks in transit each way, you have already burned a large share of your validity period before the document reaches the counter.

What order should you do this in?

Sequence matters because the documents have different shelf lives. Long-lived records first, short-lived records last.

1. Get the requirement in writing. Email or visit the registry where the marriage will be recorded. Ask for the document list, the required wording of the affidavit, the validity window and which date it runs from, the translation rule, and whether the file is lodged locally or at a consulate. Everything else depends on these answers.
2. Check the Hague status of the destination. Look the country up on the HCCH status table and note the entry-into-force date, not just the accession date. A country that has signed but is not yet in force still needs consular legalization today.
3. Order the long-lived records. Certified copies of your birth certificate, divorce decree, or a former spouse’s death certificate. These rarely expire, so get them apostilled early while you are waiting on everything else. Most state vital records offices accept mail or online orders from overseas, but they want a legible ID copy and a payment method they recognise.
4. Draft the affidavit to the registry’s wording. Use the phrasing the registry gave you. If they supplied a template, use the template. Do not sign it yet — the notary has to watch you sign.
5. Sign before the right official. A US-commissioned notary, or a consular officer at a US embassy or consulate. Check that the notary’s commission expiry date is printed, legible, and in the future.
6. File with the correct authority. State-notarized affidavit to that state’s Secretary of State; consular-notarized affidavit to the US Department of State in Washington, DC. The original must be physically submitted, because the apostille is attached to it.
7. Courier the apostilled original to you. Tracked, signature on delivery, declared as documents of no commercial value.
8. Translate and file locally. Only after the apostille is attached, so the translator can translate the apostille certificate too if the registry requires it.

What goes wrong when the order is reversed: people translate first, then apostille, and the registry rejects the file because the translation does not cover the apostille. Or they obtain the affidavit first because it feels like the main event, then spend six weeks chasing a birth certificate while the affidavit’s validity window runs out. Or they book the registry appointment before confirming the document list, and discover a requirement that takes longer than the time remaining.

Do you also need a translation?

Usually, yes. An apostille authenticates a signature and a seal; it translates nothing. The apostille certificate itself is a standardized form with numbered fields, which is why it is recognised across borders, but your affidavit underneath it is in English.

Most civil-law countries require a translation by a sworn or court-registered translator — someone formally appointed by a court or ministry, which is a category that does not exist in US law. Many registries will only accept a translator from their own approved list, which in practice means the translation has to be done in-country after the document arrives. Some require the translation to be bound to the original and stamped. A few require the translation itself to be apostilled, which only works if the translator’s signature is notarized in a jurisdiction that can apostille it.

We file apostilles; we do not translate. Ask the registry who they accept, and budget time for that step after the document lands with you.

What if the country is not a Hague Convention party?

Then the word apostille does not apply and asking for one wastes a round trip. Documents for non-member countries take the legalization chain instead: notarization, then state-level authentication (some states require a county clerk certification first), then authentication by the US Department of State, then legalization by that country’s embassy or consulate in the United States. Each link has to be completed in order, and the embassy stage often has its own appointment system and its own document-age rules.

Check the status before you spend anything. The HCCH status table lists every Contracting Party, how it joined, the date the Convention entered into force for it, and its designated competent authorities. Watch the gap between accession and entry into force — Bangladesh, for example, acceded on 29 July 2024 but the Convention only entered into force for it on 30 March 2025. In that eight-month gap, legalization was still the correct route.

How do you handle the shipping when you live abroad?

This is the part most people are genuinely anxious about, and reasonably so: an apostille is physically attached to the original, so the original has to travel.

What is actually irreplaceable

Less than you think. Certified copies of birth, marriage and death certificates can be reordered from the issuing state’s vital records office, and a certified court copy of a divorce decree can be reordered from the clerk of court. Both take time and an ID check from overseas, but they are replaceable. What is genuinely irreplaceable is a certificate of naturalization, an original diploma, and any one-off original a foreign institution issued to you. Never post those if a certified or sealed reissue exists.

Courier versus post

Use a tracked courier with signature on delivery in both directions. Declare the contents as personal documents with no commercial value; apostilled papers clear customs routinely as documents, but an unclear declaration invites a hold. Keep digital scans of everything before it leaves your hands — they will not substitute for an original at the registry, but they make reordering much faster if an envelope disappears.

Nobody can guarantee an international delivery date. Customs, strikes, weather and local last-mile delivery are outside the control of any courier and any service, including ours. Anyone who promises you a date on an inbound international leg is guessing. Build slack into your timeline instead of relying on a promise.

The e-Apostille shortcut, where it exists

A handful of US states have implemented both components of the HCCH electronic apostille programme — Kentucky, Minnesota and Washington issue e-Apostilles and maintain an online e-Register. Where the source document is from one of those states and the receiving registry accepts an electronic apostille, you can remove the physical shipping problem almost entirely. The catch is the second condition: acceptance is up to the foreign registry, and many still insist on paper with a wet seal. Ask before you plan around it.

How long does it take, and how do you work backwards from a fixed appointment?

State processing varies enormously, which is why a single national figure would be misleading. Connecticut, to take a published example, handles regular orders in five to seven business days from receipt and expedited or electronic orders within twenty-four hours. Other states measure in weeks. Federal authentication in Washington, DC runs on its own schedule — check the Department of State’s current posted timeframe rather than any third-party estimate, including an old one of ours.

If you have an immovable appointment at a registry or immigration office, plan backwards in five blocks, and remember that your validity window is burning during three of them:

Time zones add friction nobody budgets for. If you are eight hours ahead of the US East Coast, a question you email at the end of your working day gets answered while you sleep, and a document that needs a same-day decision costs you a full day. Send instructions in the morning your time.

Common reasons a single status affidavit apostille is rejected

• The notary is not a US notary. The most expensive mistake on this page. A foreign notary, a solicitor, or a local public notary cannot produce a document a US state will apostille.
• Filed with the wrong state. The affidavit goes to the state that commissioned the notary. Sending a Georgia notarization to Virginia gets it returned.
• Consular notarization sent to a state. A consular officer is federal. No state can certify that seal.
• The notary’s commission has expired or the expiry date is missing, illegible, or stamped over the signature.
• Photocopy instead of the original. The apostille attaches to the signed original. A scan, a copy, or a re-printed PDF of a signed page will be refused.
• Signed before the notary saw it. The notary must witness the signature or take your acknowledgment. Pre-signed affidavits fail at the notary stage and sometimes get caught later.
• Wording the registry will not accept. Some registries require specific declarations — your parents’ names, your current address abroad, the name and nationality of your intended spouse, a statement of the intended place of marriage. A generic affidavit missing those is apostilled perfectly and then rejected at the counter.
• Document expired in transit. It left inside the window and arrived outside it.
• Apostille obtained for a non-Hague country. The certificate is valid; it is simply the wrong instrument, and the embassy will send you back to the legalization chain.
• Translation does not cover the apostille, or was produced by a translator not on the registry’s approved list.
• Staples removed. Never detach, re-staple, laminate, or hole-punch an apostilled document. The physical attachment is part of the certification.
• Name mismatch across documents. The affidavit says one spelling, the birth certificate another, the passport a third. Registries read all three side by side.

What if you need someone in the United States to act for you?

Several steps assume a human body in the US: collecting mail, signing for a delivery, occasionally appearing at a counter. If you have no US address and no one to receive post, your options are a mail-forwarding address, a trusted relative, or a service that receives and files on your behalf. Where a relative needs to order records or sign for things in your name, a power of attorney is the usual instrument — and note that it is itself a notarized document, which means it needs the same apostille treatment if the foreign side will ever see it.

Be careful not to invent a US residence you do not have. State vital records offices verify identity against the documents you send, and an address mismatch can slow an order down considerably more than simply explaining that you live abroad.

Where to go next

We are a private apostille filing service. We are not affiliated with the US Department of State, any embassy or consulate, or any foreign government, and we do not provide legal advice or translation. Requirements differ by country and the receiving authority always has the final word on whether your file is accepted.

If you want the fuller picture of the whole marriage file rather than this one document, read our guide to apostilles for marrying abroad as an American. For the state-specific routes most often needed alongside an affidavit, see Texas apostilles filed in Austin, Georgia apostilles filed in Atlanta, Virginia apostilles filed in Richmond, or Kentucky apostilles filed in Frankfort, which is one of the three states issuing e-Apostilles.

Your next action: email the registry where you will marry and ask for four things in writing — the exact wording the affidavit must contain, the validity window and which date it runs from, the translation rule, and whether the file is lodged locally or at a consulate. Then check the country on the HCCH status table. With those answers in hand, start an order and tell us which state notarized the document; we will route it to the right authority and courier the apostilled original to you at $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.