The old statistic that half of all marriages ends in divorce is very well known. However, what most people don't realize is that this number is out of date. It is closer to sixty percent of all marriages currently end in divorce. So to assume, without checking divorce records, that your significant other has never been divorced, is a very big risk that you will be taking. Unfortunately, up until now, there has never been a good way to check the divorce records throughout the country to see if someone has been divorced before, and particularly not for free. But now, that capability exists...
In the United States, it is the individual state's responsibility to maintain the divorce records in such a condition that anyone can search through them at any time. It is your right, as a citizen of the US, under the Freedom of Information Act, to be able to search through them for any reason whatsoever. Unfortunately, the government does not maintain any searchable database in which someone can search throughout the entire country for a person's name to see if there were any previous marriages. There are, however, private databases that exists for this sole purpose.
The information you can get from a divorce record is free for anyone to look through and includes the spouse's name, place and date of marriage, children involved, amount of property involved and can even include such things as reason for divorce and alimony requirements, depending on the state. Typically the state that you are looking in will refer you to the local county's records department, where you can either visit or write a letter to find out whether they have information on the specific person's divorce. Most do not accept call-ins, and they typically charge a fee that can get to be upwards of fifty dollars, depending on the location and size of the file.
There are, however, websites whose sole purpose is to look up information on the person in question. Not only will they have divorce records, but you can search all of them, throughout the entire country, for free. You will also find that these sites have the person's property records, employment information, criminal records, and much more. As an added bonus, if you would like to do a more thorough search, getting the records is oftentimes much cheaper than it'd cost at the local courthouse, and you get to save a trip!
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