Guatemalan marriage legal in Ontario?

[CanGuate]

Hi
Does anyone know how to make my Guatemalan marriage legal/recognized in Ontario Canada? I am getting married legally in a civil ceremony next week and want to submit our PR application in the new year but not sure how to get the marriage certified....

Any thoughts?

 

[New Wife]

All you need to do is contact the Guatemalan Consulate General here in Canada. They should have a website. They will be able to give you all of the details. Remember to bring back with you - of possible - an original copy of the marriage certificate. You will need to have it translated into english by an accredited translator before you submit your papers. The Consulate General to Guatemala here in Canada should be able to help you out with that.

Best of Luck!!!

 

[CanGuate]

I have contacted them and they said I need to take my documents to Canada, how can i do that if I am here? This is what they wrote

"You would need to take your marriage certificate (the one issued by the Renap which is the official one, not the statement from the lawyer which is the one sent to the Renap to register your marriage), with all the legal steps and its translation back to Canada. The translation is done by a sworn translator but they are not the one who make it valid. This is done through the legal steps. We can provide you with a list of sworn translators and you would have to choose one from it, or you can find one at the yellow pages. The last legal step is done at the embassy as we only authenticate the signature of the department of authentic of Foreign Affairs."
(I feel so stupid that I am not understanding this!)


Do I have to wait for the marriage certificate to be authenticated by Canada before submitting our PR application? (Can I not just get a sworn translation and send that in for now, while they look into my sponsorship ability and therefore process us faster and once i get the certified copy I can then send it in?)

THx

 

[New Wife]

Are you planning to apply here in Canada when you come back, or are you apply from out of the country?

This is my experience....we were married in the Dominican Republic. At the civil ceremony were we issued a general marriage license, not the official document. We had to file and apply for the official document after the civil ceremony. That took about a week to get.

All papers have to be filed in english, so we sent our marriage certificate, police clearance, my husbands birth certificate to the consulate here, they did all the translation for us, gave us a letter of authentication, and we then submitted all of that in our application.

All we had to do was send a copy of all the documents to the consulate here, with a prepaid self addressed return envelope. Took about a week to get every thing translated and back. Lots of little steps but fairly simple.

If you are not planning to come back to canada to file, but are going to do it there, contact the Canadian Embassy where you are and ask about translation services and if you need to do anything else legal wise to authenticate your marriage.

Hope this is helpful....

 

[CanGuate]

Hi we are applying out land (so from here in Guatemala)! I hope its fast to get everything done so we can submit our application by the 15 of jan! Thanks for all advice!