FREE STATUS. — F. s., or more precisely freedom of status, is the condition in which the spouses must find themselves in order to contract marriage validly. In the broad sense, it is immunity from all those things that oppose its valid and licit celebration; but in the narrower sense, both in civil and in canon law, it means that the contracting party is not bound by any legally valid matrimonial bond. Otherwise, because of the existing impedimentum ligaminis (v. LIGAMEN), the new marriage would be null.
I. DOCUMENTS
1. The baptismal certificate (can. 1021 § 1) is the first of the documents that may establish free status, provided that it is recent and issued for matrimonial purposes, that is, containing the obligatory marginal annotations. Indeed, it is prescribed that the reception of Confirmation and of Holy Orders, the celebration of marriage, and religious profession be recorded in the margin of the baptismal registers (cann. 777 § 1, 1103 § 1).2. The document attesting that the banns have been published without result is another proof of free status; and since the banns may be obligatory in several parishes (v. PUBBLICAZIONI MATRIMONIALI), sometimes not one but several such documents are required.
3. When one of the contracting parties comes from, or has resided in, places other than that of the celebration or that in which the premarital inquiry is conducted, instead of the document concerning the banns, a certificate of free status is requested from the respective Curia. This is issued either following the publication of banns concerning only the party in question, without reference to the other, or after careful searches in the parish registers or reliable inquiries among persons who may be aware of the person’s free status (can. 1023 §§ 2–3). A certificate of free status issued by the civil authority may also sometimes be useful, and in certain cases must be requested.
4. Other documents establishing free status in particular cases are: a) the death certificate or the legal, civil, or ecclesiastical declaration of the presumed death of the deceased spouse or of one reputed to be deceased, when the parties are widows or widowers, or presumed widows or widowers; b) the definitive judgment declaring a previous marriage null, or the dispensation from a ratified and non-consummated marriage, when there has previously been a null or dispensed marriage. Such a judgment or dispensation, however, must not contain a prohibition against contracting a new marriage. Naturally, these documents must be recent, in order to exclude the possibility that in the meantime some other bond may have been contracted.
II. WITNESSES AND ATTESTATIONS
Proof of free status is also obtained through witnesses and attestations.In the preliminary inquiry, the first to be questioned on the matter are the prospective spouses themselves. Each of them must produce two witnesses; but the witnesses of one may also testify for the other. Nevertheless, if, despite everything, the parish priest retains doubts that are not merely negative—either because he is not certain of the truthfulness of the prospective spouses or of their witnesses, or for other reasons or circumstances—he must question some other person who may reasonably be presumed to be in a position to know whether the prospective spouses have contracted some relationship not publicly known. The oath must be administered to all. Although the CIC (can. 1019 § 2) prescribes this only when the evidence is not entirely conclusive or in case of danger of death, many parish priests nevertheless administer to all prospective spouses, or even to other persons, the supplementary oath, so called because it should supply the place of the evident proof that is lacking.
In conclusion, in order to attain at least moral certainty of the free status of both parties, the parish priest must observe the prescriptions of the CIC and of the Ordinary, and employ all such precautions as the circumstances may suggest, including the intervention of the Ordinary himself in complicated or highly doubtful cases.
In civil law, too, freedom of status is proved by documents and testimony. Searches are likewise made in the civil-status registers, and the banns are published. For testimonial proof, recourse is had to an instrument of notoriety. In cases where one of the prospective spouses has been abroad or in other places, a certificate of free status issued by the respective local civil authority is also required.