Sen. Alting’s SB 249 is a good housekeeping piece of legislation. Currently a county clerk of courts is required to send the State Department of Health copies of marriage records. This bill allows the Clerk to do so electronically (or continue to do it by paper) and specifies that, if done electronically, it should be either through a system approved by the state department of health or one developed by the judicial technology and automation project. (Struck me as a bit odd that the State Dept. of Health is charged with indexing the marriage records.)
Probably there is a lot of antiquated record keeping in the state that could use updating. And, some thought has to be given to the infirmities of electronic records. But, in any event, this seems like a good bill.
This makes it a lot easier to cross-reference marriage records and track down bigamists….
Katz,
Your point is well taken. Bigamy prosecutions are somewhat rare, I believe. But there are a fair number of “technical bigamies.” I ran into this when my ex and I got an offer accepted on a farm. We were buying it from an estate, as the former owner wadded up his Harley-Davidson and had gone to V-Twin heaven.
The estate accepted the offer, but discovered that the guy was still technically married in New Jersey. He and his wife had filed for divorce, gone through the proceedings and tendered a divorce decree for the judge to sign. But the judge never signed it and (his/her) lawyer never followed up.
The estate had to reopen the divorce case and enter a final decree. Tied up the sale for three months.