Divorce Certificate Translation Services
Dissolution paperwork from any jurisdiction, rendered in full for a registrar, a court or an immigration officer, with the case number, the seal text and the date of finality kept intact.
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Max. file size 1 GB
One English word covers three different pieces of paper
Most of the confusion around this paperwork comes from a vocabulary problem rather than a legal one. Depending on where a marriage ended, a person may hold a judgment, a short final order, a civil registry extract, or some combination of the three, and the authority asking for it usually means one specific member of that set.
The judgment or decree is what the court actually decided. It can run to dozens of pages and typically covers the grounds, the division of property, arrangements for children, and any maintenance ordered. It is the longest and the most expensive item to translate, and it is also the one that answers the most questions.
The final order is the short instrument that actually ends the marriage on a given date. In England and Wales this is now called a final order, having been known as a decree absolute until the law was rewritten. Elsewhere it appears as a certificate of finality or a note stamped onto the judgment recording the date it took effect.
The registry extract is a civil-records document. Across much of continental Europe and Latin America a dissolution is recorded as a marginal note against the original marriage entry, and the registry then issues a short extract confirming it. It proves that the marriage ended and says almost nothing about the terms.
Translate Certificates →
Ask which one they want before you pay for a translation
The distinction is not academic. Translating a forty-page judgment when the office wanted a two-page extract costs money for nothing, and turning up with the extract when the office wanted the terms of the settlement means a second appointment.
- A registry office publishing notice of a new marriage normally wants proof that the previous one ended, which the short extract or final order supplies.
- An immigration authority reviewing a petition for a new spouse wants evidence that the earlier marriage was lawfully terminated, and generally accepts the decree or the final order.
- A court asked to recognise a foreign dissolution wants the full judgment, since it has to see what was decided and on what basis.
- A pension scheme, an insurer or a land registry acting on a transfer wants the paragraphs that deal with property and entitlement, which only the judgment contains.
- An application to restore a former surname needs whichever instrument actually ordered the change, and that is not always the one that ended the marriage.
Where the matter is contested or the sums are large, this belongs with legal translation services rather than a self-service upload.
Translate Certificates →Legal terms that have no English counterpart
Family law is written into each country's own civil code, and several of its central ideas simply do not exist elsewhere. Reaching for the nearest familiar English word imports a legal concept the original court never applied.
Two dates, and only one of them counts
Almost every system separates the day a judgment was pronounced from the day it became unappealable and took effect. The marriage ends on the second date, sometimes weeks or months after the first. Registries and immigration officers work from that later date, so a translation that renders both as simply the date of the decree has erased the distinction the reader needed.
Matrimonial property regimes
The German equalisation of accrued gains, the French community limited to acquisitions and the Spanish regime of jointly acquired assets each describe a distinct statutory arrangement. Flattening any of them into community property attaches an American state doctrine to a foreign court's order. Naming the original regime and explaining it briefly keeps the meaning where it belongs.
Parental responsibility and contact
Many civil-law systems separate the authority to make decisions about a child from the right to spend time with that child, and they may leave the first held jointly while allocating only the second. Compressing both into custody and visitation misstates what was ordered, in a paragraph a court in another country may later be asked to enforce.
Identifiers stay as printed
The court name, the case or docket number, the registry entry number and the volume and page references are how the receiving office verifies that the document is real. They are reproduced character for character, never normalised into a tidier format, and the court name keeps its original form with an explanation beside it rather than being replaced by the nearest local equivalent.
Names on both sides of the marriage
These documents carry a person under a maiden name, a married name, or both, sometimes in different scripts on different pages. The spellings have to line up with the passport being used in the application, with any variant recorded rather than quietly harmonised away.
Everything on the page, including the back
Marginal annotations, the wording inside round seals, court fee stamps, clerk initials and the certification chain printed on the reverse all count as content. A complete translation accounts for each of them, and says plainly where something is illegible rather than leaving a gap the reader cannot see.
What a dissolution file costs
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Start with a 7-day trial for $2, then $14.99/month, or save more with annual billing
7-Day Trial
MOST POPULARthen $14.99/month after trial ends
- 7-day full access trial
- Trial limit: 10 pages or 3,000 words
- $0.005/word AI translation
- 120+ languages
- PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, IDML, TXT, JPG, PNG, CSV, JSON
- Team access & custom glossaries
- Email support
Monthly
POPULARRegular price $29.99, now 50% off
- 100 pages or 30,000 words per month
- $0.005/word AI translation
- 120+ languages
- Unlimited file storage
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- Team access & custom glossaries
- Priority email support
Annual
SAVE 25%~$11.25/month, save 25% vs monthly
- 100 pages or 30,000 words per month
- $0.005/word AI translation
- 120+ languages
- Unlimited file storage
- PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, IDML, TXT, JPG, PNG, CSV, JSON
- Team access & custom glossaries
- Priority email support
Need a USCIS-certified translation?
If you are filing your divorce certificate or other records with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS requires a complete, certified English translation of every foreign-language document, with a signed certification of accuracy. Our USCIS Translation Services provide certified, notarized translations accepted for green cards, visas, and citizenship applications.
See our USCIS Translation Services →Where the apostille fits, and what it does not do
A judgment or extract crossing between countries usually needs authentication as well as translation, and the two are separate steps that people routinely conflate. Under the 1961 Hague convention, a designated authority in the issuing country attaches an apostille to the document. Between member states that single certificate replaces the older chain of consular stamps. Where one of the countries is outside the convention, the longer route through the foreign ministry and the consulate still applies.
What an apostille attests is narrow: that the signature is genuine, that the person who signed held the office they claimed, and that the seal is the right one. It says nothing whatever about what the document contains, and it does not make the document readable to anyone. A translation is still required, and the apostille itself carries text that generally has to be translated along with everything else.
Sequence matters and it varies. Some authorities want the apostille placed on the original before translation, others want it on the translation, and a few want both. Confirm which order applies before you start, because redoing it means paying twice. Our apostille translation page covers the document itself in more depth.
Long judgments upload in one piece
See the upload before you start
Court files are long, so it is worth watching how one page behaves before committing the whole bundle.
Working through a dissolution file
Court paperwork is the one place where doing the steps out of order costs the most, so start with the question at the counter.
Find out which instrument is wanted
Ask the registry, consulate or court whether they need the full judgment, the short final order, or the civil registry extract. This one question decides whether you are translating three pages or forty.
Settle the authentication first
If an apostille or a consular legalisation is required, confirm whether it goes on the original or on the translation. Attaching it in the wrong order usually means starting again and paying for both steps twice.
Upload the complete document
Every page, both sides, including any sheet carrying only a stamp or a marginal note. PDF, DOCX and image formats are all accepted, and files can run to 1 GB or 5,000 pages.
Check the dates, names and numbers
Read the output against the original for the date the order took effect, the case number, the court name, and the spelling of both parties. Those four items are what the receiving office actually verifies.
Questions about dissolution paperwork
Do I need the whole judgment translated, or only the certificate?
Ask the receiving office, because the answer changes the cost by an order of magnitude. Registry offices and immigration filings often accept the short instrument that records the date the marriage ended. Courts asked to recognise a foreign dissolution, and anyone acting on a property or pension division, need the full judgment because the terms are only in there.
Which date ends the marriage?
The date the order became final, not the date the judge pronounced it. Nearly every system leaves a period in which an appeal is possible, and the marriage continues until that period closes. Court paperwork usually shows both dates, and a translation has to keep them distinct because a registrar publishing notice of a new marriage works from the later one.
Will an AI translation be accepted by a registry office or a court?
For understanding your own file, yes, and it is the sensible first step. For filing, no. Registries, courts and immigration authorities want a signed certification from a human translator confirming the translation is complete and accurate, and several jurisdictions further require a translator sworn before a court. Use the machine version to read the document and decide what you actually need certified.
Does an apostille replace the translation?
No. The apostille authenticates the signature, the capacity of the signatory and the seal, and it deliberately says nothing about the content. The receiving authority still cannot read a document in a language it does not work in. In practice the apostille itself also carries text that goes into the translation.
My paperwork is a photocopy with a stamp across it. Is that usable?
It can be translated, but check separately whether the receiving office will accept a copy at all. Many require a certified copy issued by the court or registry rather than a photocopy you made. Text lying underneath a stamp is often unrecoverable by character recognition, and where that happens the honest output marks it illegible rather than guessing.
The document uses a property term I cannot find in English. What happens to it?
It is kept and explained rather than swapped for the nearest familiar phrase. Statutory property regimes and parental responsibility arrangements are defined by the civil code of the country that issued the order, and substituting an American or English equivalent silently changes what the court decided. A reader is better served by the original term with a short gloss.
What does it cost for a long court file?
Judgments are the bulkiest item here and can run well past a hundred pages with annexes. The $2 seven-day trial covers 10 pages or 3,000 words, enough to test a sample. The Monthly plan is $14.99 for 100 pages or 30,000 words, the Annual plan is $135 a year at about $11.25 a month, and anything past the allowance is $0.005 per word. See pricing for the comparison.
Upload the file and find out what it says
Judgments, final orders and registry extracts, translated in full so you know which document the counter is actually asking for before you pay to certify one.
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