HOW TO: Getting Married in Brazil.

This is a guest post from Mr. Nuno, my intern, who publishes Brazil Business 101.

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Hello everybody, here is something that a lot of people have been asking me, you a good looking “gringo”, find a good looking Brazilian, you fall in love, then you decide to get married here, now, WHAT TO DO?.. Here is the procedure you’ll need to take. (the entire procedure will be covered in 4 posts)  

*Little observation, every Cartório (notary) has it's own procedure, this are the minnimum requirements, it may alter from city to city or from cartório to cartório.

First of all you need to get all you documents and get everything registered and ready to be used in your marriage.

 Documents required for registration 

• Original Birth Certificate of the groom or bride – (Authenticated* / consularized in the Brazilian Embassy or Consulate in the country of origin of the betrothed). This procedure will not be done in the ministry of international relations of Brazil or in an embassy in Brazil so do this in your county.

• Certificate of marital status of the groom or bride, (Authenticated*  /  consularized in the Brazilian Embassy or Consulate in the country of origin of the betrothed). This procedure will not be done in the ministry of international relations of Brazil or in an embassy in Brazil so do this in your county.

• Certified copy of passport (main pages, and by that I mean, everyone that has something written on).

• Two witnesses on the day of  the marriage, with at least 18 years of age, known to the couple and that can provided with identity and CPF (Brazilian “Social Security Number”), they can be relatives, but cannot possess a proxy of any of the spouses (if the marriage is taken place outside the notary, you’ll need four witnesses);

• If your wedding is by PROXY, the proxy should be recorded in the notary or Brazilian consulate in the country of origin of the betrothed. This procedure will not be done in the ministry of international relations of Brazil or in an embassy in Brazil so do this in your county.

The proxy must contain:

• Name that the bride will use after the wedding. Note: you can only add a name, never delete one.

• Name the groom will use after the wedding. Note: Same as the above.

• Specify in the proxy if the spouse will be present on the day of the wedding.

• Not being present, you must specify that the prosecutor shall have full powers to represent the betrothed before the Judge of Peace (the person who conducts the marriage) in the wedding.

• Specify the property regime to be adopted, i.e Universal Communion of Assets, Full Separation of Assets (we will cover this in another post.). In the regimes of Universal Communion, Separation and Participation in Final Aqüestos  is mandatory to present a prenuptial agreement, drawn up in the Registry of Notes.

Note: The documents of the first two items above must be translated by a sworn public translator in Brazil, then you must authenticate (also to be covered in another post) the translator’s signature on a Notary, after this procedure you must record the translated documents in the Registry of Deeds and Documents.

For a divorced person.

• You must have your divorce sentence or similar, approved by STJ (Superior Court) and attached to all the documents above.

This was part 1, more to come.