Texas Divorce Records

The Texas divorce rate is extremely high, averaging four in one thousand people per the population of about twenty million. You can receive a letter of divorce verification, but this can’t be used for any legal purposes. Divorce verification letters are only available from the year 1968 to the present date and can take as long as ten to fifteen business days. If you need more information or must obtain a copy of the original divorce decree, a fee of $20 will be charged. You should send the fee along with the application (download or get in person) to:

Texas Vital Statistics Office (VSU)
1100 West 49th Street
Austin, TX 78756

Offline Instructions for Ordering a Marriage or Divorce Verification
1. Obtain and fill out an application for a marriage or divorce verification letter. You can either download one or pick one up in person. See the table below for details.
2. Send in the application with the correct fee ($20 per verification). The fee for a verification is non-refundable and non-transferable, even if a record is not found.

The processing times in the table below are estimates. Please make checks or money orders payable to DSHS.

Texas divorce rate historically hovers around 4 per 1000 of total population. That’s in the worse half of the states in the country. The troubling fact is that Texas has a huge population of 20 million so the absolute number of divorces in Texas over the years is high.

The State agency in charge of divorce records is the Texas Department of State Health Services. It provides public services pertaining to Texas Divorce Records through its Vital Statistics Bureau along with other principal vital record categories namely Marriage, Birth and Death.

As with general practice among the various states, this office can only issue verification letters stating whether or not a divorce was recorded with the State of Texas. They are available for divorces that occurred in Texas from 1968 to the time of the latest update. These documents can serve to confirm that a divorce did occur and tell the reader where and when it was made official.

Certified copies of Texas Divorce Records can only be requested from the District Clerks’ office where the divorce was granted. The same applies for divorces before 1968 due to the fact that divorce applications were not filed with the State offices until that year. The Vital Statistics Unit website lists the addresses of all the County Clerks’ office in Texas.

TX Divorce Records

Reports of Divorce Decrees from the various District Clerks’ office are compiled onto a Report of Divorce Indexes. They are not themselves legal documents and are prepared only as aids in tracing the county where the original Divorce Decree is filed. They are never to be considered comprehensive and are often purely informational.

Divorce verification can be ordered by submitting an application in person or through the mail accompanied by the required fee ($20 per verification). It can also be done online through TexasOnline on the official eGovernment site for the State of Texas with a 10-15 business-day processing time.

Actually, the most fuss-free way is to engage the service of professional record providers. For a nominal fee, you get instant nationwide access to divorce records which are privately assembled on their database. This is particularly handy if your scope of search is multi-state. This one right here is a case in point. Take a free trial now!