Hi,
My husband just passed away this past fall. He and I were married in India in 1971. There are two problems here. Both my husband and I were naturalized in 1980. We don't have our original Indian passports. We've had US passports for the last 30 years! I also cannot find where my husband may have kept our marriage certificate or these pld Indian passports. The challenge is India only had paper records in 1971. They need our expired Indian passports to do a manual search and provide a copy of the certificate.
What can I do now? My husband and I have paid into the system for 30 years.
What am I supposed to do now? There is no one in India I know anymore who can get the information I need and I don't have my Indian passport!
There must be some other way to prove we were married! Is there some other way to get this information? Does the US immigration office have this info when we immigrated to the US?
Any help would be appreciated!
Proof of marriage for survivor benefits as widow
There are a couple ways you could try to prove you qualify for benefits. If you live in a common law marriage state, you could try to qualify based on common law marriage principals. However, the SSA seems to frown on this if you were actually "married at a ceremony".
NOTE: Do not attempt to establish a common-law marriage routinely when a ceremonial marriage is alleged but no record is found.
Perhaps better is to provide evidence acceptable to the SSA of marriage. For example :
Acceptable secondary evidence of a marriage ceremony includes:
http://socialsecurityhop.com/en/handbook/17/1716-evidence-of-ceremonial-...
https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0200305020
https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0200305025#a2