Registering Your Marriage in Brazil

Good news: a trip to Brazil isn’t necessary to register your marriage there.

Marriages in the United States are valid in Brazil. They just need to be registered first. You can either file directly with a Brazilian notary office or you can start with the Brazilian Consulate and finish at a Brazilian notary office.

If you’re not a Brazilian resident, you’ll file with the First Notary Office in Brasília. If you’re a resident, you can file with the notary office (1º Ofício do Registro Civil) where you live.

A foreign marriage should be registered when one of the spouses first travels to Brazil or within 180 days of returning to live there permanently.

If you fail to register your marriage, it’ll come back to haunt you at some point. Say you and your spouse want to buy a house. The notary will require a copy of your marriage certificate, registered in Brazil, to confirm your marital property regime.

To register your marriage, you’ll need the original certificate issued by the consulate and a copy of the Brazilian spouse’s birth certificate. If the Brazilian spouse was previously married, a copy of the prior marriage certificate with an annotation of the divorce will be required instead. More documents are needed when the marriage hasn’t yet been filed with the consulate.

The payment of a fee will be required too, and that must be done before the notary office starts any work. So don’t waste time. Plan ahead as the process can take a while.