Most foreign civil registries ask an American for four things: a certified birth certificate, proof you are free to marry, proof of identity and nationality, and — if you were married before — a divorce decree or a death certificate for the prior spouse. Each one needs an apostille from the US authority that issued or certified it, plus a translation the registry will accept.

That is the short answer. The hard part, if you are already living overseas, is that the apostille does not come from one place, you cannot sign in front of the notary down the street, and the recency clock on your documents keeps running while an envelope crosses an ocean twice. This page is written for that situation. Federal Apostille is a private service; we are not affiliated with the Department of State, any US embassy, or any foreign government.

Who apostilles what — the fork that trips up most couples

There is no single US apostille office. Authority follows the document, not the person:

• US federal documents — the FBI Identity History Summary, IRS Form 6166 tax residency certificate, a Social Security benefit verification letter, USCIS documents such as a Certificate of Naturalization, and anything notarised by a US consular officer abroad — are apostilled by the US Department of State, Office of Authentications, using Form DS-4194.
• State documents — birth, marriage and death certificates, divorce decrees and court orders, diplomas, and any affidavit or power of attorney notarised by a US notary — are apostilled by the Secretary of State of the state that issued or notarised them. Not the state you last lived in. Not the state where your parents still live. If you were born in New Jersey, the apostille comes from Trenton even if you have not set foot there since childhood; see our page on a New Jersey birth certificate apostilled in Trenton for how that route runs.

Which documents does a foreign registry usually ask for?

There is no universal list. A registry in a civil-law country typically wants more paper than a common-law one, and some countries route the file through their consulate in the United States instead of accepting it locally. Get the list in writing from the office that will actually register the marriage, and ask the same office for the recency window and the translation rule. The table below covers what Americans are asked for most often and who apostilles each item.

Note the gap this table exposes: the United States does not issue a certificate of no impediment. There is no federal register of marriages, so no agency can certify that you are unmarried. Every US citizen marrying abroad closes that gap with a sworn affidavit, and the registry will usually specify the exact wording it wants. Get that wording before you swear anything.

How recent do the documents have to be?

An apostille itself has no expiry date — the Convention does not provide for one. The expiry comes from the receiving authority. Many registries will only accept a vital record issued within three or six months, and the clock almost always starts on the date the underlying record was issued, not on the date the apostille was attached. Ask the registry which date it counts from; the answer decides your whole schedule.

This is the trap for anyone with a fixed appointment at a registry or immigration office. If the record is issued in week one, mailed to a US agent in week two, apostilled over the following weeks and couriered back, a six-month window can be half gone before the document reaches your hand. Order the short-dated items last and work backwards from the appointment; our guide to timing an apostille around a residency appointment walks through the sequencing.

Do you need a translation as well as an apostille?

Yes, in almost every non-English-speaking country, and the two things are entirely separate. An apostille certifies the signature, the capacity of the signatory and the identity of the seal on the document underneath it. It says nothing about the content and it does not validate a translation attached to it.

What varies is who may translate. Many civil-law countries require a sworn translator registered with their own courts or ministry — a traductor jurado, traduttore giurato, tradutor juramentado, vereidigter Übersetzer — and will refuse a US-prepared certified translation outright. Others accept a US translation with a certificate of accuracy. Some require the text of the apostille certificate to be translated too. Three questions settle it: must the translator be registered locally, must the translation be done after the apostille is attached, and does the translation itself need any further certification? We do not provide translation, so ask the registry and arrange it locally once you know the answer.

Is your destination a Hague country, or does it need legalization?

If the country where you are marrying is a Contracting Party to the Apostille Convention, one apostille per document is the whole authentication chain. If it is not a party, an apostille is the wrong instrument and will be rejected: that country uses consular legalization, where the document is certified up the US chain, authenticated by the Department of State, and then legalised by that country’s embassy or consulate in the United States — a step that must happen on US soil, not where you live.

Check the destination on the HCCH status table on the day you file, not months earlier. The table has changed materially in recent years as large states acceded, and an accession that is signed may not yet be in force. Check two further things while you are there: the entry-into-force date for that country, and whether any objection has been lodged that suspends the Convention between it and the United States. If you live in a third country but are marrying in another, check both. We confirm status for every order we handle, and we will tell you if legalization rather than an apostille is what your file actually needs.

What if you cannot get to the United States?

Everything above assumes someone can act inside the US. You can run the entire chain from overseas, but three specific obstacles need naming.

A foreign notary’s seal cannot be apostilled by a US state

If you sign an affidavit, a power of attorney or a copy certification in front of a notary in your country of residence, no US Secretary of State can apostille it — not the state you were born in, not the state you last lived in, none of them. An apostille can only be issued by the competent authority of the country where the act was executed. This is the most expensive mistake Americans abroad make, because the document looks perfect right up to the moment it is refused.

Two lawful routes exist. Sign before a US consular officer at an embassy or consulate, which produces a federal seal authenticated by the Department of State — read how a US embassy notarisation is authenticated before you book, and confirm with the post that it still performs notarials and will take that specific act. Or have the document signed in the United States by an agent acting under a power of attorney, which itself must be executed before a consular officer or a US notary. Separately, a locally notarised document can be apostilled by your host country’s own competent authority for use elsewhere — but that is a local-chain document, not a US one.

The FBI check when there is no Live Scan near you

You do not need a US Live Scan location. The FBI accepts inked fingerprints taken on an FBI fingerprint card by any competent authority — a local police station, a private fingerprinting provider, and at some posts the embassy itself — and submitted to CJIS by mail or through the online application. Confirm the current card and submission method on the FBI’s Identity History Summary Checks page before anyone rolls your prints; a card in the wrong format comes back rejected. Our write-up on having FBI fingerprints taken overseas covers the practicalities. Once issued, the summary goes to the Department of State for its apostille — a state office will return it unprocessed.

Ordering a replacement vital record from overseas

Start from the CDC/NCHS directory of state vital records offices and order directly from the state of birth. Watch for the circular problem: some states require a notarised identity statement from the applicant, and if you notarise that abroad you are back in the foreign-notary trap. Where that applies, use a US consular officer, or check whether the state accepts an online identity-verification route instead. Our overview of how to apostille a US document while you are living abroad goes through the ordering and return-mail logistics in more detail.

The sequence, and what breaks when you reverse it

1. Get the registry’s list in writing. Document by document, with the recency window, the translation rule, and whether the file is filed locally or at that country’s consulate in the US. Everything downstream depends on this.
2. Order certified copies from the issuing offices. Vital records from the state of birth, decrees from the court clerk that granted them. Certified originals only — a photocopy, a scan, or a notary’s copy certification will not be apostilled.
3. Swear any affidavit in the right place. Before a US notary in the US, or before a US consular officer abroad. Use the registry’s wording. Reversing steps one and three is how people end up swearing the wrong declaration twice.
4. Route each document to its correct authority. Federal documents to the Department of State on Form DS-4194; state documents to that state’s Secretary of State, adding a county clerk certification first where the state requires one. Name the destination country on every request — the apostille identifies it.
5. Translate after the apostille is attached. If the registry wants the apostille text translated too, translating first means paying twice.
6. File before the window closes. Count from the record’s issue date, not from the day it landed in your letterbox.

Shipping originals out of the country and back

This is the part most people are genuinely afraid of, and reasonably so. A certified vital record can be reordered; a Certificate of Naturalization, an original decree with a raised court seal, or an apostilled document with a short remaining window cannot be replaced quickly from overseas. Practical rules: use a tracked courier rather than ordinary post in both directions; declare the contents as documents of no commercial value; keep high-resolution scans of everything before it leaves your hands; and never ship the only existing copy of something you cannot reorder if a certified duplicate is obtainable instead.

Check before you send whether the receiving office accepts courier deliveries, whether it will deliver to a PO box, and whether it will return documents to a foreign address or requires a US return address. Where it cannot ship abroad, a family member, a trusted agent or a mail-forwarding service fills the gap. No one — us, the courier, or the agency — controls international transit or customs inspection, so build slack into your schedule rather than relying on a delivery date.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

• A photocopy or an uncertified copy submitted in place of a certified record from the issuing office.
• A notary’s copy certification of a vital record. Most states refuse to apostille this; the certified record itself must be used.
• Sent to the wrong authority — a federal record to a state office, or a state record to the Department of State.
• Sent to the wrong state, because the applicant used the state they live in rather than the state that issued the record.
• Missing county clerk certification in states that require the clerk to certify a notary’s signature before the Secretary of State will act.
• Notary defects: expired commission, missing or illegible seal, no venue or date, a name on the seal that does not match the signature, or a notary whose signature is not on file with the state.
• A foreign notary’s seal, which no US authority can certify.
• Destination country not named on the request form, or named incorrectly.
• Document altered, laminated, or unstapled and restapled. Leave the binding and seals exactly as issued.
• Apostille obtained for a non-Hague country that requires consular legalization instead.
• Registry-specific refusals: affidavit wording that does not match what the registry asked for, a record older than the local window, or a translation by someone not on the registry’s approved list.

Requirements differ by country and by office, and the authority receiving your file has the final say on what it will accept — which is why the written list from the registry is step one, not an afterthought.

What to do next

Email or visit the civil registry where the marriage will be registered and ask for three things: the exact document list, the recency window and the date it is counted from, and the translation rule. Then check the destination on the HCCH status table. With those answers you will know precisely which documents go to the Department of State and which go to a specific state’s Secretary of State, and you can start an order for each one — our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive, with the government filing fees covered inside it rather than added on. Tell us your appointment date when you order so the sequence can be built backwards from it.