How To Access Arizona Vital Records

Arizona Vital Records

Are Vital Records Public In Arizona?

Arizona is a state with “closed records,” implying that vital records are not public documents. The Arizona laws protect its citizen’s privacy by limiting the accessibility of these records to the public. To acquire a certified copy of any vital records, a person must be 18 years old or older. Arizona laws regard vital records as a secret; thus, only authorized individuals can access and see these documents.

Birth, adoption, and divorce records are only accessible to the public through the legal owners, which means the general public cannot freely access these documents. This is because these documents are private.

However, not all vital records are closed records. Some are accessible to the public. Arizona’s divorce documents have often been deemed court records and are accessible to the general public. However, in exceptional situations, a judge may decide to approve a motion to seal a divorce record. When a record includes information that the law deems secret, such as information identifying a juvenile or a domestic violence victim, there are specific steps that individuals must take. Only authorized persons will be able to access such documents if this occurs.

On the other hand, marriages are not secretive events in the community. Thus, marriage records in Arizona are typically public documents, and anybody may examine them.

What Is The Procedure For Obtaining Arizona Vital Records?

The Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) is in charge of the state’s vital records. One may request vital records online from local county health departments or court clerks. This may be via mail or in person. To receive a vital record in Arizona, interested parties must fill out a particular vital records request form to indicate what they want. In addition, they must pay the associated search and copy fees. Nonetheless, they cannot acquire these documents without providing legal identity cards or forms.

Moreover, third-party aggregation sites also handle and publish publicly accessible vital data. These sites are often not limited by geographical record availability, and it might be a good place to start when looking for particular or many records. However, you should know that these third-party websites are not affiliated with the government. Consequently, record availability may vary from what is available via official sources. The requesting party must provide the following information to locate a document using search engines on third-party websites:

Their official names.
The city, county, or state where the case was filed.
The location of the document in the issue.

Those who intend to conduct an online search of Arizona vital records must provide any information necessary to accelerate the search. This data might contain the following:

The registrant’s name as it appears on the record.
The date of the critical event.
The location of the event, whether it was in a city or a county.
The site where the event occurred.

Requirements For Accessing Vital Records In Arizona

Those wishing to receive copies of vital data in Arizona must be at least 18 years old. In addition to age, they must possess acceptable identification evidence, which is generally a government-issued picture I.D. Since Arizona is a closed records state, only authorized individuals directly and physically interested in the information may retrieve these vital records.

Note that each state keeps its own vital records, and each state has its laws governing the vital records. Thus, if you seek a birth or death record from another state, you must contact that state’s vital records office. Birth and death data for events in other states are not accessible from Arizona’s Bureau of Vital Records.

Vital Records consist of births, adoptions, marriages, divorces, and deaths documented on registers, certificates, and papers. The United States Vital Records gives more research information on studying and utilizing vital records. Individuals may buy a copy or an extract of most original documents from the Arizona Department of Health Services or the County Clerk’s Office of the county where the incident happened.

Birth And Death Records

The Bureau of Vital Records is responsible for keeping and producing certified copies of vital records, including birth, death, fetal death certificates, and certificates of birth resulting in stillbirth for events in Arizona. The Bureau of Vital Records officially started documenting birth and death occurrences in July 1909. However, it keeps a sample of delayed birth records of Arizona residents (from 1855) and death records (from 1877) from other sources.

The Arizona Department of Health Services Bureau of Vital Records offers the following specialty services by appointment only.

Delayed Birth Registration.
Foreign-Born Registration.
Putative Father Registrations and Searches.
Corrections or Amendments of Records for Births that happened before 1997.
Deaths That Occurred Before 2008.

These are two vital and mandatory records that each individual must and will have eventually. Birth certificates, for instance, are the national I.D.s of the minors. They are vital since parents have to possess them to get governmental services, including medical services. Birth records are not accessible easily to the public. For an individual to access them, they must possess the vital requirements to see them.

On the birth records, one may be able to view the

Mother’s name.
Date of the child’s birth.
Child’s sex.
The location of the incidence.
The mother’s age.
Mother’s marital status.
The father’s name, age, and domicile, if applicable.
Birth kind (single, twin, triplet, and so on).

The death certificates also may not be vital to the owner but to the government for record-keeping and compensation.

Arizona Marriage And Divorce Records

Arizona’s marriage and divorce records are court documents rather than vital records. Requests for copies of Arizona marriage or divorce records are made to the Clerk of the Superior Court in the county where the marriage license or divorce was granted. The Arizona Office of Vital Records does not record marriages and divorces in Arizona. Divorce documents were first discovered in the Territorial Legislature’s archives in 1863. In the 1870s, the records were maintained in District Courts, and subsequently, the jurisdiction was transferred to the Superior Courts, where they remain today.

One may obtain a marriage license copy at any Clerk’s Office location. But they have to provide:

The complete legal names of both applicants previous to the marriage.
The year the marriage took place.
If available, the marriage license number is at the bottom of the marriage license certificate.
If available, the marriage license number is at the bottom of the marriage license certificate.

The records date from 1905 to the present day, albeit the years between 1905 and 1985 are partial, and many files may be missing from the record. The County Clerk of Superior Court provides all of the documents in this collection.

How To Access Marriage And Divorce Records

Those interested in obtaining copies of official marriage records in Arizona may contact the Clerk of the superior court for the county where the marriage took place. The Arizona judicial branch provides an online directory that offers contact information for all state courts to assist citizens with this job.

Before receiving copies of these data, requestors may pay a charge. Furthermore, parties interested in obtaining copies of marriage records but unable to contact the record custodian’s office may do so online via third-party websites.

Interested parties may access copies of public divorce documents online using a third-party service. Furthermore, interested parties may get copies of divorce records by contacting the Clerk’s office at the court where the divorce record is. Before applicants access copies of these documents, they must generally pay a charge.

The Arizona County Clerk Marriage Registers database offers a wide variety of information on persons married in the county over the preceding century and more recent years, where records are accessible. The following information is available in these marriage records:

Both couples’ first, middle, and last names,
Their genders are all available.
The marriage ceremony’s actual date and place.
Other significant events that happened on that day in history.
The race (nationality) of the person
The first and last names of the individual’s parents

Nonetheless, Arizona organizes all records by last name and marriage date for simple retrieval.

Arizona Sealed Vital Records

In Arizona, adoption records are sealed and may only be viewed with a court order. Adoptive parents may write to the Arizona Department of Health Services to get a copy of their child’s birth certificate after the adoption. A complete application for a certified copy of the birth certificate and an adoption worksheet should be included with this request. A documented final decree of adoption from the superior court where the adoption was issued is required in addition to these documents. They must also include a $30 charge for the first copy of the record sought, plus an additional $20 for each subsequent copy requested. Money orders, attorney’s firm business checks, Visa or MasterCard, are all acceptable forms of payment for this charge. However, the office does not accept cash payments. The adoptive parents may simply bring the completed application form and any required costs already handled. Applicants should send these things to the following address:

P.O. Box 6018.

Phoenix, AZ 85005.

Bureau of Vital Records Attn: Adoptions.

Interested parties may use the services of a Confidential Intermediary to get access to sealed adoption documents under ARS Title 8-134. Any information collected by the confidential intermediary is deemed secret and may only be disclosed between parties when both the party who started the records search and the party who is the subject of the records search have signed a written agreement. The following parties may legally use the services of a confidential intermediary:

A child that has been adopted and is at least 18 years old
An adoptee’s parents or legal guardians.
A dead adoptee’s adult offspring.
Birth parents, adult siblings, biological grandparents, and other adoptees’ biological extended family members.

Making Changes To Vital Records

Changing the information on the vital records is very simple in Arizona. However, you have to produce the legal documents and identity to back up your claims and reasons for the change. In addition, all individuals making these changes must be adults or should be directly involved in the subject of change.