Foreign Divorce Opinion Letters

A foreign divorce opinion letter is required when a person wants to get married in Canada and one of the parties to the new marriage has been divorced outside of Canada. The purpose of the letter is to validate the foreign divorce in Canada. Specifically the Minister of Government Services must issue an authorization before a marriage license may be issued. The authorization is issued based on application package the contents of which are described below.

There are a number of alternative factors that a lawyer can consider in confirming the validity of the foreign divorce. For example, a lawyer will examine whether at least one of the parties to the divorce an ordinarily resident in the jurisdiction that granted the divorce for a least one year immediately preceding the commencement of the proceedings for the divorce.

In addition, we can look at whether  at least one of the parties domiciled in the granting jurisdiction at the time of the commencement of the proceedings. In other words was there a real and substantial connection between at least one of the parties and the jurisdiction that granted the divorce.

In order to issue a foreign divorce opinion letter, we meet with the clients and analyze the circumstances of the divorce. We also examine the foreign divorce decree which must be translated and notarized.

The actual application package submitted to the Office of the Registrar General will have to contact the following documents:

1)        A completed marriage license application signed by both parties;

2)   The original divorce or a copy certified by the administrative office of the court in the granting jurisdiction, or sealed or otherwise properly authenticated by the court.    When the divorce is in a language other than English or French,  a certified translation,  from someone other than one of the applicants,  is also required.    These documents will be returned to you.

3)   A Statement of Sole Responsibility for each divorce signed by both of you and properly witnessed, and

4)       The Foreign Divorce Opinion Letter.

Our lawyers and support staff speak a range of language including, Russian, Ukrainian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. Our firm has handled numerous foreign divorce opinion letters for clients for a wide variety of clients.

Our fee for the service is $250 + tax.