Request By:
Sandra Jones
Woodford County Clerk
Opinion
Opinion By: ANDY BESHEAR,ATTORNEY GENERAL;Marc G. Farris,Assistant Attorney General
Opinion of the Attorney General
The Woodford County Clerk has requested an opinion from this Office as to whether identification issued by a foreign government satisfies the statutory requirements for issuing a marriage license. For the reasons set forth below, we believe that the statute permits applicants to provide any government-issued identification when applying for a marriage license, and therefore does not require that the identification was issued by the Commonwealth or the United States government.
KRS 402.100 sets forth the information that applicants must supply to the clerk in order to receive a marriage license. Among other things, applicants must provide "vital information," including "the full name, date of birth, " and other personal details. KRS 402.100(1)(b). KRS 402.100(4) provides: "A Social Security card or other government-issued identification card shall be requested as a means of identification of each party but the number shall not be recorded or retained." Nothing in the statute (or in any other statute) limits or defines the term "government-issued identification. " We believe that the absence of any such limiting language, combined with other statutory sections, our prior decisions, and court cases interpreting the Kentucky Marriage Law, indicates that county clerks must accept any identification issued by any government, including identification issued by foreign governments.
First, there is no requirement that an applicant for a Kentucky marriage license be a citizen of Kentucky or of the United States. Indeed, an applicant need not even be a resident of Kentucky or the United States. As this Office has previously opined, "There is no statute disqualifying nonresidents, as such, from applying for a marriage license in Kentucky." OAG 82-416. That statement is as true for nonresidents of the Commonwealth as it is for nonresidents of the United States. Nothing in the marriage statutes requires that the individuals applying for a marriage license reside in this country. It is therefore consistent with this aspect of the Kentucky Marriage Law that an identification issued by a foreign government would suffice to meet the requirement of KRS 402.100(b).
This interpretation is also consistent with KRS 402.210(1)(b), the part of the Kentucky Marriage Law that lists the identification that applicants may provide as proof of age. That statute expressly permits the use of birth certificates issued by foreign countries. See KRS 402.210 ("(1) Both parties to a marriage shall . . . (b) Present to the county clerk documentary proof of age in the form of . . . 2. A certification of birth issued by the state department of health, a local registrar of vital statistics, or other public office charged with similar duties by the laws of another state, territory, or country. . . ."). It also permits applicants to provide a passport or automobile driver's license as proof of age, and nothing in that statute limits what government may have issued such a document. See KRS 402.210(1)(b)4., 5. Given that KRS 402.210(1)(b) expressly permits the use of official documents issued by a foreign government, there is no reason to read into KRS 402.100(b) a limitation excluding such documents where no such limitation exists on the face of the statute.
By contrast, when the General Assembly has intended to limit which government-issued identification is acceptable, it has done so with clarity. See KRS 117.227 (permitting use of "any United States government-issued identification card" or "any Kentucky state government issued identification card with picture," among other documents, for voter's proof of identity). The General Assembly is therefore aware of what language it may use to exclude the use of identification documents issued by foreign countries. Had the General Assembly similarly intended to restrict the range of government-issued identification that clerks may request when issuing marriage licenses, it would have done so in the Kentucky Marriage Law.
Our interpretation of the statute is also consistent with court decisions that have interpreted the requirements of the Kentucky Marriage Law in favor of the issuance of licenses and the upholding of marriages. As our highest court has declared, "The law favors marriage, and indulges many presumptions relative to the legality of a marriage which is shown to have been celebrated by the performance of a ceremony." Munsey v. Munsey, 303 S.W.2d 257, 259 (Ky. 1957).
Our prior opinion concerning divorced applicants provides additional guidance. In response to a question as to whether applicants must submit divorce decrees when applying for a marriage license, this Office noted that "there is no express requirement for an attested copy of a divorce decree even though one of the applicants states that he or she is divorced. " OAG 78-431. We observed that the statutes reflect a legislative policy that "is simply that the clerk is required to take the information and data given by the applicants at its face value, unless he had some extrinsic reason for not doing so. . . . Fundamentally it can be seen that the burden of the truth of such matter is upon the applicants and not upon the clerk. " Id.
We think that this statute similarly reflects a legislative judgment to impose only a limited duty on the clerk to attempt to confirm the identity of the applicant. It provides only that the government-issued identification "shall be requested as a means of identification of each party . . . ." KRS 402.100(4) (emphasis added). In other words, the clerk need only attempt to ascertain that the name on any government-issued identification matches the name provided by the applicant. Tellingly, the statute does not even require that the clerk request identification with a photo - a Social Security card will suffice. These features of the statute suggest that it is primarily the duty of the applicant to provide truthful information concerning his or her identity.
Your request notes that the applicant who only possesses a foreign government-issued identification may apply for a Kentucky-issued personal identification card pursuant to KRS-186.4123 even if he or she is not a citizen, and the applicant may then use that identification card to apply for the marriage license. However, KRS 186.4123 only provides for issuance of identification cards to Kentucky residents. See KRS 186.4123(2)(a). As noted above, there is no requirement that applicants for a marriage license be residents of Kentucky. It is therefore inconsistent with the Kentucky Marriage Law to require applicants to obtain an identification for which only residents may apply.
Your request also indicates that the Transportation Cabinet has advised that the term "government-issued identification" includes only a state driver's license, state or federal issued identification card, social security card, or U.S. Passport. It is not apparent from your request whether the Cabinet's advice was directed to marriage licenses. 1 However, nothing in the statute at issue here supports drawing such distinctions among which government-issued identification is acceptable. Put differently, nothing in the statute supports accepting identification issued by other states but refusing to accept identification issued by other countries.
In sum, the text of the Kentucky Marriage Law, our prior opinions, and relevant court cases all demonstrate that identification issued by a foreign government satisfies the requirement of KRS 402.100(4).
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