the marriage verifiers are coming

[calimac]

In the 17 years that B. and I have actually been married, nobody's ever asked us to prove it. We've filed joint tax returns and listed each other as familial dependents on all sorts of things, without any trouble. Until now.

B's employers have decided to crack down on the presumably epidemic problem of false dependents on health care benefits - at the same time that they're actually canceling the routine-care part of their policies, but that's another story - and we will be required to prove that we were actually born in the United States married.

This caused me to check and confirm something I'd noted but hadn't worried about the last time I re-filed my papers, which is that we didn't have a copy of our marriage certificate. The last thing I remember of the form we'd received when we applied for the license is of our witnesses (the best man and matron of honor - that was part of their job) signing it on the day and the temple secretary taking it away, promising to finish filling it out and to send it in. I just hoped she actually did.

Therefore I ventured down to the county clerk's office to see what would happen. At the end of a long corridor past a huge wall map of the county dated 1890 - which distracted me for quite a while - the office consisted of a long sheath of service windows, a waiting area with about 20 people in it when I arrived, and a dedicated self-service computer terminal at which you'd navigate through a menu tree to tell it what you wanted, and get a slip of paper with an alphanumeric customer number. These ranged all over the alphabet and were called in no discernible order, so you had to pay attention.

And it turned out to be no trouble at all. The clerk checked my ID, typed in to her terminal B's and my full names from the form I'd filled out, and produced a scanned image of the original form, which was immediately printed out onto a piece of official certificate paper pre-festooned with county seals and all. I paid for it and that was it.

What gets me is this: the image was of the original form, handwritten signatures and everything. It had been scanned into their computer system. And they printed a copy and gave it to me. Why couldn't the state of Hawaii have done this with Obama's birth certificate when he first applied for a copy three years ago?

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I didn't say there is no reason; I said that asking for it is futile.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Evidently asking around here is.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You said, "It's just the way it is." This implies not that the reason is undiscoverable, but that there is no other reason, and since "It's just the way it is" is not a reason = there is no reason.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

OK, if you say so.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't say so. You say so. I say not so.