Request By:
Ms. Cecelia Brown
Deputy Clerk
Fayette County Courthouse
Lexington, Kentucky 40507
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You ask if there is any reason the register of marriage and the marriage licenses cannot be typed, rather than being written out longhand.
We see no reason why the marriage register or marriage certificate cannot be typed. Of course, the signatures of the applicants and of the clerk or deputy must be placed on the record. See KRS 402.100 and 402.230. A basic purpose of the marriage certificate data is to preserve the data as documentary evidence of the fact of marriage. Caldwell v. Williams, Ky., 118 S.W. 932 (1909).
You next have a question about the three day waiting period, which is covered in KRS 402.080 (2). Actually the day that the application for the license is filed constitutes the first day of the waiting period. Then on the third day of the waiting period after regular business hours, the clerk may issue the marriage license to the applicants. The applicants can come by the office just as the office is being locked up for the day. It is not necessary that they be handed the license outside of the building. They can be given the license inside the clerk's office just before the doors are shut at the end of that day's business in the clerk's office.