Getting married to a Carioca is actually pretty straight forword. The hard part is if your are divorced. The thing to remember in that you just do not go down and get a marriage license. If you are not a Brazilian citizen, you have to have the following paperwork to get married in Brazil:

1 Your birth certificate,
2 Your mothers birth certificate,
3 Your fathers birth certificate,
4 Proof that you are not a criminal,
5 Certificate that you are single, or copies of all your divorce papers.

So you think it is simple to get all these things. Ok, the do it.

First, where do you get something saying you are not a criminal. Try your local police department. That will only get you a piece of paper saying that you are not a problem in your city. What about your state, or nationally? In California, you need need a request from the local police department, and you have to send it to the Department of Justice for the State of California in Sacramento. Anyway, just finding out all of this took two weeks. Even my attorney friends could not tell me where to do this.

Also, if you have not been divorced, where do you get proof that you are single. There is no place in the USA to get a piece of paper saying that you are single (more on this later).

Now suppose you have all the items listed above. Even when you go to the Catorio (registration place in Brazil), and they have more different kinds of Catorios then you can imagine, they will still not accept your paperwork. An why not? Becuase you need to get your paperwork verified at a counsulate here in the USA before it will be considered valid in Rio.

Ok, you still do not have proof that you are single. Even if you are divorced, it is easier to just lie, and say you are single. You can go to the US consulate in Rio, Sao Paulo, or Recife and get a "Certicado de Soldado" (name is propably not correct, but it is something like that. This costs about $50.00 US. Of course the consulate does not know if you are married or not, but this just go along with the Brazilian bullshit so that we can get married there.

Not that you have all your papers, you can now get your marriage license. So you think that you are going to get you marriage license on Friday, and get married on Saturday. Dream on buddy. After you get a marriage license, you have to wait 30 days before you get married.

The trick to getting married in Brazil is that it takes the patience of Job if you are from out of the country. It takes time, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork then you could ever imagine.

Getting married in Brazil still has many advantages over a K1, or K3 visa, and that is after you are married in Brazil, the paper work process to get a wife here can happen in a little as 2 months. The other advantage of processing the brides paperwork in Brazil, is that when she enters the country, she will be free to travel back and forth to Brazil from the USA, and even more important, SHE WILL HAVE A GREEN CARD AS SHE ENTERS THE USA.

With a K1 Visa, your fiancee comes here, and has to go back in 90 days if she does not get married. Also, the process of getting a green card for her after getting married just takes forever.

With a K3 visa, the INS just gives you a lot of shit, and the process takes 6 to 12 months to complete. Then even when the bride gets here with a K3 visa, she does not have a green card.

The paperwork process for what you need to do if very clear on the US Consulate web site in Rio. If you follow it to the letter, getting a wife here will be a snap after you get married.

If you hire a lawyer to get your wife into the country, they will want at least $4000 + necessary fees. The lawyer will get all of his information of the same web site you can read. So read the web site, and keep your $4000.

Good luck to anyone that want to do this.

I helped a friend through this process. He started about Sept 2002 down this road, and got married last year in July 2003 in a civil ceremony in Rio.

A the end of August, he went to the consulate in Rio to start the paperwork process. By Nov, the bride had her papers to enter the USA.

She will be her shortly, and they expect to live happily every after (he hopes so, but you never know how life will treat my friend).

By the way, you can get prenups in Brazil, and they are very common there. If you are going to get a prenup with your bride, may I suggest the following:

1. Have it done by an attorney in the state you are going to live in,
2. Have in translated into Portuguese so that you have both an English version, and one in Portuguese,
3. May sure that your bride has a attorney in Brazil that will sign both the English, and Portuguese versions of the Prenup.
4. Make sure your wife signs both versions.

I do not know about other states, but here in California prenups now are not legal unless an attorney and represents both parties of the marriage. Also, your bride must pay her attorney. If you pay her attorney, you will have problems with the validity of the prenup.

This is probably more then you ever wanted to here in your life, but in chat many have been asking what it takes to get married in Brazil. Well, now you know.

Web site for the US Consulate in Rio de Janiero:

http://www.embaixada-americana.org.br/index.php?itemmenu=55&submenu=7&action=rio.php&&html=immisec.htm

It takes awhile to study this, but if you study this, you can get through the process. If you have questions, go to the consulate, get the forms (you can also download them over the Internet), make a list of questions, and then go back to the consulate, and ask them your questions. They are very helpful with answers, and this will save you a lot of time because then you will know exactly what they want, and just do what they say, and your bride will be here soon after.

Thanks for the post, OH!

I went thru the K-1 route, 12 years ago, took 1.5 years to get the K-1, 6 months for the green card (she had a temp something or other till then, not sure if she could have travelled, we didn't try, 2 years for resident alien, and another 4 years for citizenship. We used a lawyer up untill the premanent alien status, cost US$1.5K, not too bad. At the time, everyone I spoke with - Brazilian consulate here , American consular officials (and personal friends) there, lawyers here, etc (no websites back then!) said DO NOT get married in Brazil and bring her back, would take much longer. Immigration laws have changed several times since then, so I wouldn't be suprised if they were right, still it's humbling to read that I could have just gotten married there (at least now I could).

Before anyone asks, yes I have dual citizenship, but to marry my sweetie and brig her HERE, I had to do it as an american, so I was starting from the same place as the rest of you romantics...

I'll throw in some additional advice to your very good post, things that still hold true in BRazil at least.... Getting divorced is even more of a pain than getting married, although there are now Brazilian Lawyers here in the States that will do it for you in Brazil. Make sure that pre-=nup is airtight, Brazilian law "by default" splits all assets - including pre-marital!!! - 50-50. better yet, don't get into a divorce situation. Make SURE this is the girl for you (we've all discussed this to death in other threads). One very important factor - FAMILY. Meet her family, make sure they're "good people" and that you get alng with them and vc-versa. Family is everything to Brazilians.

Abraco,

BS

Is it maybe a faster process to petition your Brazilian GF to get her a fiancée visa and just marry her here the USA? I heard that this will only take around 180 days to process. She comes here. You marry her. She get her greencard.

RIOrules:

You can get your girl friend here, and even get married, but it will take you forever to get her a greencard. Also, if she had to go home for any reason, it is a hard thing to do because she cannot travel until she has the greencard.

I understand that the process of getting her here is faster with the K1 Visa, but all the other stuff is hell.

OH

I forgot to say thank you for the info; so, thanks OH.

No problem. Hope it helped. I still think of all the ways, even though you have different obsticles, if done in a planned fashion, this is the best way to get someone from Brazil into this country assuming that you are going to marry them.

The other thing to remember, is that each embassy, or consulate does things differently. This process will not work in most other Latin American countries.

Good luck.

OH