One French Divorce, Two Records: The Judgment and «Mariage dissous»

A French Divorce Judgment and an Annotated Marriage Record

A client sent the two French documents that record one divorce: a jugement de divorce (divorce judgment) and a full copy of the couple’s acte de mariage (marriage record). The marriage record carries the «Mariage dissous» divorce notation. The city hall where the couple married entered it about a year after the judgment.

The judgment, the French counterpart of a U.S. divorce decree, comes from the family-affairs judge of a French tribunal judiciaire, the first-instance court that hears divorces. Our translation names that court the Judicial Court. Its four pages end with the judge’s and the clerk’s signatures, the formule exécutoire and the court’s round seal.

The marriage record is a one-page copie intégrale: a full copy of the whole record, where an extrait (extract) would only summarize it. The redacted image below shows the copy’s heading, the end of the record and the notation.

The client asked for a signed Certificate of Accuracy with each translation, following USCIS guidance.

How We Translated the Judgment and the Annotated Record

We prepared the certified translation of the French divorce judgment and the marriage record as two separate packets. Each holds the full English translation, a signed certificate with its own Translator’s Notes, and a copy of the French original. The judgment packet runs nine pages; the record packet runs three.

In the judgment, «contradictoire» became “adversarial” each time it appears. A Translator’s Note explains the choice: the judgment was rendered after both parties appeared and were heard.

The formule exécutoire is the standard closing order, in the name of the French Republic, that directs officials to enforce a decision. We translated it in full. The seal was described as far as it is legible, and its unreadable center was marked “not legible” rather than guessed.

In the French marriage record translation, the notation stays where it stands: “Marriage dissolved. Divorce judgment of the Family Court Judge of the Judicial Court of [city]…”. Dates went into figures and the hyphen fillers were left out, each with a note that says so.

Expert Note

"Translator’s Notes (marriage record): In the original, the unused space at the end of each line of the record is filled with runs of hyphens, a standard anti-insertion feature of French civil status records; these fillers are not reproduced in this translation. The paragraph beginning “Marriage dissolved” is the divorce notation entered on the marriage record on [date]; it forms part of the full copy issued by the registry."

Sarah JenkinsAcademic Credential Translation Specialist

A mention de divorce is the notation a French civil-status office adds to a marriage record, and to each spouse’s birth record, to show a divorce. This judgment ordered exactly that in its decision. The full copy shows the order carried out.

We also read the two packets against each other. The notation cites the judgment’s date and the date of an earlier ordonnance de non-conciliation, an interim order made early in the case. Both dates match the judgment, and both translations render them the same way.

The pairing settled the date order, too. The judgment writes most of its dates in figures, day first, while the marriage record spells the wedding date out in words. That gave an independent check that the day-first reading is right.

An invented example shows the written-out pattern: «le douze mai deux mil neuf, à onze heures vingt minutes». Day, month, year and time are all spelled out. A translation puts such a date into figures as Month DD, YYYY, and the time on the 12-hour clock.

The Outcome

CertTranslate delivered both certified translations in September 2026 for the client’s USCIS filing. Each came with its own signed certificate, as the client had asked.

Five Translator’s Notes travel with the two packets: two in the judgment, three in the marriage record. Together they show a reader why a word reads “adversarial”, why the dates are in figures, and where the divorce notation sits.