This one person told us it would cost us about $300.00 to register her divorce in Colombia, have to go to a notary for that. But we would need a copy of her divorce from Venezuela that was less than 3 months old with an apostile that doesn't make sense to me. We have the original divorce papers. Some phase like "Colombia un Exequatur" was used. We have no intention on living in Colombia, just want to visit occasionally.
Things are so much better here, can go to a notary for free, even our marriage here was free, we got married by a federal judge, he was more than pleased to perform the ceremony, even refused money for his charity. Plus we had to leave copies of her divorce with the State of Wisconsin for ten business days when we applied for our marriage license before we could get married. Don't know what they did, but said it was okay.
Venezuela isn't too nice either, they made a one letter error on my step daughters' birth certificate, wife had to go to their court to have that changed and it was their mistake. Cost me 800 US dollars for that, and they wanted US dollars, not Bolivars. USCIS had all of these papers, translated for almost a year, before they issued conditional resident cards. I don't know what they did with these papers either, but said, all is okay. Now Colombia.
What a mess, Colombia was, bus strike, major traffic jams, POE didn't want to admit my wife because she had Colombia on her country of birth on her US passport. But explained she was in a catch 22 position, has to go into Colombia to renew her ID. They let her in, I had no problems, took two seconds, with my US passport, born in the USA.
So we chased all over Bogota for three days to get an up to date ID registration even though my wife's mom had what I would call a certified copy. The newest one was identical, but had to pay a notary to retrieve it. Ironically, her Colombian marriage was never registered with this state. Never saw such a sloppy marriage certificate in my life, my wife was only 18 at the time, no signatures, no fingerprints, date and witnesses were wrong, her name was misspelled, and was done in some Catholic church. Wife and her ex left shortly after to go to Venezuela and neither could find any work in Colombia.
In just comparing our USA marriage certificate, both hers and my signature, the signature of a federal judge, our two witnesses, the clerk of court, and the register of deeds, a bit more iron proof.
In making inquiries to registering our marriage in Colombia, first would have to get a recent copy of her Venezuelan divorce and pay the supreme court of Colombia about $3,000.00 USD to read it over and decide if it meets Colombian law, adding another couple of thousand would assure it does. Another option offered would just to get a Colombian divorce for about 150 bucks, that would require her meeting up with her ex, a wife beater by the way, and admitting to the fact we were married illegally as far as Colombia is concerned for the last six years. Not an option.
But since all Colombian records showed that she was never married in the first place in that country and still single, just renew her ID as a single person in her maiden name so she could get her Colombian passport so she can visit her name. With that piece of ####### marriage certificate still floating around, we wouldn't dare register our marriage. In a practical sense, don't know how much longer her mom is going to live, and our only goal is to let my wife visit her, perhaps once a year, and because her place of birth is on her US passport, she needs that Colombian passport to just get in to see her mom.
Never ran into so much political BS in my life with both governmental and church corruption. But they will be happy to correct for lots of money.
