Hey everyone. I an a US citizen and my wife is a native Argentine citizen and a naturalized US citizen. We have two young kids. We were married in the US and had a church ceremony in BA but did not do a civil marriage in Argentina. We have both been married before and divorced in the US. We are moving to BA in Oct.
Do I need divorce papers and marriage license from my previous marriage for the Permanent Residency process? Will we need to have a civil marriage in Argentina (or is it easier for the process)?
I'm not sure what you need for permanent residency, but since you'll need it all for the civil union, I'd bring all the required documents anyway.
Assuming you are doing this in CABA (Buenos Aires City, Capital Federal), here is the page with the requirements:
http://www.buenosair...uniones-civiles
The relevant part is:
Con matrimonio y divorcio en el extranjero:
Autorización mediante. Disposición concedida por la Dirección General del Registro Civil, Uruguay 753.
That language is pretty general, but from some friends who just did this, here is what the needed. Because of the divorces, you will need your previous marriage certificates and divorce decrees, and they must be apostilled in the US. Do this before you leave, it is much more difficult, slow, and expensive to do it once you're here (because you have to have someone in the US do it for you). Once you're here, you'll have to get it translated and legalized, from a public translator (one licensed by the colegio de traductores publicos - they have a web site).
The other relevant section of that page talks about if you have children in common:
Hijos en común:
Partida de nacimiento original y fotocopia debidamente legalizada y traducida según corresponda. La fecha de expedición de la partida no podrá ser mayor a un año. Uno de ambos convivientes deberá acreditar domicilio en su DNI vigente, en la jurisdicción de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, con una antigüedad no menor a dos años.
So you need the birth certificates, Apostilled, and translated as I described above. It says one of the people must have a valid DNI that shows their address is in CABA, and I think it says you're supposed to have lived here for two years, but I'm not sure how that affects your case. Maybe there's another process to legalize a marriage abroad, here in Argentina?
You can do this all yourself, especially if at least one of you speaks Spanish well enough to deal with all the tramites (paperwork). If you want a lawyer to do it for you, send me a PM and I can recommend the lawyer who helped my friends do the process.
Also: You should start a new thread, so we don't clutter up this useful thread with information that is specific to your case. The forum doesn't have a wiki yet so this thread is the closest thing we have for now.