Recorded as married on a census, but marriage occurs later

[kob3203]

I've seen this a couple of times, once in England and once in the US, both mid 1900s.

Have I got the wrong couples or is this something that occasionally happens ?

Note that I haven't got the marriage certificate for either yet.

[HughC]

It certainly happened that couples living together claimed to be married.

[Jebber]

People didn’t always tell the truth. Divorce was not easy, Sometimes a later marriage was because one of the couple were already married to someone else, so waited for first spouse to die before they could marry the current partner
.

[Nick_Ips]

On the census forms the marital status applies to the individual, not to the family or any apparent couple - therefore it is quite possible for two people to be living in a household and both correctly shown as married... just not necessarily to each other.

[melba_schmelba]

People didn’t always tell the truth. Divorce was not easy, Sometimes a later marriage was because one of the couple were already married to someone else, so waited for first spouse to die before they could marry the current partner
.

Yes, I have seen this happen several times. Not exactly sure what the reason was, it could have been because they were in a big city and knew no one would really know if they were legally married or not, or it could be one of the partners was previously married as you said, and they waited for that partner's spouse to die or to save to be able to afford the divorce fees perhaps.

[Jebber]

On the census forms the marital status applies to the individual, not to the family or any apparent couple - therefore it is quite possible for two people to be living in a household and both correctly shown as married... just not necessarily to each other.

That doesn’t work, because the column between the name and marital status requires the relation ship to the head of the household.

[Gadget]

On the census forms the marital status applies to the individual, not to the family or any apparent couple - therefore it is quite possible for two people to be living in a household and both correctly shown as married... just not necessarily to each other.

That doesn’t work, because the column between the name and marital status requires the relation ship to the head of the household.

Marital status and relationship to head are in two separate columns.

e.g.

[Jebber]

That is what I said, the relationship is
between name and status. It only becomes less clear if the couple are in the middle of a large household.

[CaroleW]

I researched my friends family some years ago.  Her grandparents had children from 1889 onwards but they only married in 1915 - religious differences apparently

On each census from 1891 - 1911 they are shown as a married couple - she is shown as “wife”