Fam. Code, § 359 · Part 2. MARRIAGE LICENSE
Fam. Code, § 359
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Except as provided in Sections 420 and 426, applicants to be married shall first appear together in person before the county clerk to obtain a marriage license.
(b) The contents of the marriage license are provided in Part 1 (commencing with Section 102100) of Division 102 of the Health and Safety Code.
(c) The issued marriage license shall be presented to the person solemnizing the marriage by the parties to be married.
(d) The person solemnizing the marriage shall complete the solemnization sections on the marriage license, and shall cause to be entered on the marriage license the printed name, signature, and mailing address of at least one, and no more than two, witnesses to the marriage ceremony.
(e) The marriage license shall be returned by the person solemnizing the marriage to the county recorder of the county in which the license was issued within 10 days after the ceremony.
(f) As used in this division, “returned” means presented to the appropriate person in person, or postmarked, before the expiration of the specified time period.
(g) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2024.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Repealed (in Sec. 1) and added by Stats. 2021, Ch. 620, Sec. 2. (AB 583) Effective October 7, 2021. Operative January 1, 2024, by its own provisions.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=FAM§ionNum=359.
- Text hash
- sha256 afb9f2a137664e596eb34d65da6ecd9d126baaaf9e39547c78abfa8f9eb62f6f
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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