The sworn statement that you are free to marry — asked for by foreign registrars, embassies, visa offices and sometimes banks. This page explains the three different documents people call by this one name, which one your office actually wants, and how to get it without a rejection. Written by the documentation team at Legal Space Services (LSS).
A single status affidavit is a statement you make on oath — that as on a stated date you are not married, and that there is no legal impediment to your marrying. In India it is ordinarily typed on non-judicial stamp paper, signed by you as the deponent, and sworn before a Notary Public, who attests it, affixes a seal and enters it in the notarial register. That register entry is what turns a piece of paper into a document somebody else can rely on.
The same document travels under half a dozen names, and the different names cause most of the confusion. Unmarried certificate, bachelorhood certificate, spinsterhood certificate, certificate of no impediment, single status certificate — an office abroad will use whichever phrase its own law uses, and an Indian notary will produce the same affidavit for all of them. What matters is not the name on the request but the form of the document, and that is where people get caught.
It is worth being clear about one thing at the start: in India there is no single central authority that issues a "single status certificate" the way a municipality issues a birth certificate. The base document is one you swear yourself. Everything above it — magistrate verification, apostille, embassy attestation — is a layer added on top, and each layer is added only because some particular office asked for it.
Send us what they have asked you for — an email, a checklist, a screenshot. We will tell you which of the three documents that is, and what it will take. There is no charge for the answer and no obligation.
Order Now — Free +91 98913 43962Almost every problem with this document starts here. People are told "get a single status certificate", they get the cheapest version, and it comes back refused. There are three distinct documents:
| Form | Who makes it | Typically accepted by |
|---|---|---|
| Notarised affidavit | You swear it; a Notary Public attests it | Indian banks, employers, Indian registrars, many domestic purposes, and some foreign offices that only want a sworn declaration |
| SDM-verified certificate | You submit the notarised affidavit with proofs to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of your area, who verifies and endorses it | Foreign registrars and consulates that will not take a self-sworn document; also the usual pre-condition before apostille |
| Apostilled / embassy-attested document | State authentication, then the Ministry of External Affairs; then the embassy if the country is outside the Hague Convention | Marriage registration abroad, spouse visas, immigration files |
The honest answer to "which do I need?" is: whichever the office reading it says. Ask them, and if you can, ask in writing. An email from the registrar saying "notarised affidavit, apostilled" is worth more than any general advice on the internet, including ours. When our clients cannot get a clear answer, we normally prepare the affidavit in a form that can be taken up the chain later without being redrafted — that way a second requirement does not mean starting again.
Drafted in the wording your office accepts, on the correct stamp paper, notarised, and delivered as a soft copy plus hard copy. From ₹600, usually same day. Nothing is charged in advance.
Order Now Ask on WhatsAppFor the affidavit itself the list is short:
If you have been married before, one more document is essential and is not optional:
A single status affidavit that gets accepted is short and unambiguous. It normally contains:
In Delhi a personal single status affidavit is ordinarily sworn on a ₹10 or ₹20 non-judicial stamp paper. Where the affidavit is going to an SDM for verification or onward for apostille, a ₹100 stamp paper is commonly expected. Stamp values are a state subject and vary, so an affidavit prepared for use in one state is not automatically right for another.
Notarisation is what gives the affidavit its standing. The deponent signs in the presence of the Notary Public, who satisfies himself of identity, attests the document, affixes his seal and records the entry in his register. An "affidavit" printed at a shop and never sworn is not an affidavit at all, whatever it looks like — and this is exactly what is being sold when the price looks too good.
If you separately need documents attested, our notary attestation service covers that; and if the name on your records has to be corrected first, that is a name change affidavit, which is a different document with a different process.
Tell us the country or the office the affidavit is going to, and we will confirm the stamp paper value, the wording and the full cost first. You decide after that.
Start the order — free Talk to us firstThis is the part that costs people the most time, so it is worth setting out properly. India has been a member of the Hague Apostille Convention since 2005. For a document going to another member country, an apostille from the Ministry of External Affairs is enough on its own — no embassy step is needed. For a country outside the Convention, the MEA does a normal attestation and the document then goes to that country's embassy or consulate in India for legalisation.
The order of the steps is fixed, and skipping one is the usual cause of a rejected file:
Almost everybody who comes to us for this document arrives with the same plan: get an affidavit notarised by a notary, and send it abroad. For a good number of destinations that plan fails at the first step, and it fails because of a requirement that is published but rarely read.
Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India — bachelorhood / single status certificate
"A Certificate of bachelorhood/single-status/eligibility to get married can be issued by a competent court/ SDM having jurisdiction of the area of the residential address of the applicant."
"This can be in the form of a certificate/ affidavit notarized by SDM which is required to be counter-attested by the Home Department of the State concerned."
Only after that does it reach the Ministry: the document "is to be attested/apostilled by the Attestation Section of the Consular, Passport & Visa (CPV) Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi", and applications for attestation "are to be submitted with the Outsourced agencies".
Source linked at the foot of this page.
Read that twice, because it is the difference between a two-week job and a two-month one.
The document MEA describes is one issued by a competent court or the SDM — or an affidavit notarised by the SDM. Not simply an affidavit stamped by any notary in a corridor outside a court.
And before MEA will touch it, it has to be counter-attested by the Home Department of the State. That is the step that is missed most often, and the one that sends files back.
So the full chain, in the order it actually runs:
| # | Step | Who does it | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The document itself — certificate or affidavit | A competent court, or the SDM of the area of your residential address | Jurisdiction follows your residential address. Applying at the wrong SDM office is the first thing that goes wrong. |
| 2 | Counter-attestation | The Home Department of the State concerned | The step most people have never heard of. Without it MEA will not proceed. |
| 3 | Apostille or normal attestation | Attestation Section, CPV Division, MEA, New Delhi | Submitted through the authorised outsourced agencies — MEA does not take documents directly from individuals at its counter. |
| 4 | Embassy legalisation | The destination country's embassy or consulate in India | Only where the destination is not a party to the Hague Convention. Apostilled documents need no further step in member countries. |
| 5 | Translation | A translator the destination accepts | Several countries want a certified or sworn translation, and some want it done in their own country rather than here. |
What we do about steps 1 and 2, because they are where the time goes. Before anything is drafted we find out which of the two forms your destination will accept — a court or SDM certificate, or an SDM-notarised affidavit — and whether your State's Home Department requires an appointment or accepts a walk-in. Getting those two answers first routinely saves three weeks.
Half the confusion on this subject is vocabulary. The same underlying document goes by at least four names, and the name your consulate uses tells you which authority they expect it from.
Common in the United Kingdom and several Commonwealth countries. Strictly it is a certificate that there is no legal obstacle to the marriage, and in some systems it is issued by the authority in the country where the marriage will take place rather than by India. Ask which way round your case runs before you buy anything here.
The phrase most commonly used by consulates dealing with India, and the one MEA itself uses. This is the document the chain above produces.
The older Indian term, still used by MEA and by many SDM offices. If a clerk looks blank at "single status certificate", this is the phrase that will be recognised.
Used where the destination simply wants your sworn statement rather than a government certificate. This is the lightest version and the one an ordinary notarised affidavit may satisfy — which is exactly why it is worth finding out which version you need.
So the first question is never "what should the affidavit say?" It is "does my destination want a sworn statement from me, or a certificate from an Indian authority?" Those are two different documents with two different chains and two very different timelines, and the answer comes from the consulate or the registrar abroad — not from a format on the internet.
That single answer decides whether you need a notarised affidavit or the full SDM-and-State chain — and it decides whether this takes two weeks or two months. Ask us before you start; it costs nothing.
A good number of the people who ask us for a single status affidavit do not actually need one, because the marriage is happening here. It is worth knowing what the Indian process asks for instead.
Single status documents turn up in spouse, fiancé and dependant visa applications as often as in marriage files, and the expectations there are different again.
A consulate assessing a visa is not registering your marriage — it is assessing you. The single status document is one piece of evidence about your circumstances, and it sits alongside financial records, relationship proof and your ties at home. Our visa affidavit guide sets out what the United States and the Schengen rules actually require, and why an affidavit is never evidence of anyone's finances.
Two practical points that apply specifically to a visa file.
Validity windows are shorter. Many consulates will not accept a status document more than three or six months old, and a document that was apostilled a year ago is usually finished. Do not get this done early.
Consistency across the file matters more than the wording of any one document. If your marital status here differs from what an earlier application said, that inconsistency is the thing that gets noticed — not the phrasing of the affidavit. Where a name is spelt differently across documents, deal with it openly with a one and same person affidavit rather than leaving it.
A significant share of the people who need this document are not describing a first marriage, and the affidavit they are handed is often the wrong one.
An affidavit that says "I am unmarried" when there was an earlier marriage is a false statement — not a simplification, not a formality, and not something that quietly goes away. It goes into an immigration or marriage file that is checked against other records, and it is exactly the kind of statement that surfaces years later at the worst possible moment.
The correct document states your present marital status and how the earlier marriage ended. Which is different in each case:
The decree is the primary document — its court, case number, date, and the section under which it was passed. The affidavit adds what the decree cannot say: that no appeal is pending, that the period for appeal has expired, and that you have not remarried since. Our divorce affidavit guide deals with this in full, including why a "divorce deed" on stamp paper never ended anybody's marriage.
The death certificate of the former spouse is the document. The affidavit states the date, the place, and that you have not remarried since. Where the death certificate carries a different spelling of your own name — which is common on older certificates — reconcile it rather than hoping nobody notices.
A different thing again, and the decree will say so. It should be described accurately rather than compressed into "divorced", because the two are not the same in law and the destination may treat them differently.
This is the hardest case and it is not rare. A ceremony took place, it was never registered, and now the question is what to say. The honest answer usually involves establishing what happened before declaring anything about it — and our joint affidavit guide explains why a certificate is evidence of a marriage rather than the thing that created it, which cuts both ways here.
What we do with these, and it is the whole of our position on this page. We will draft a truthful statement of a complicated marital history, and in our experience offices deal with an honest and complete account far better than they deal with a simple one that later turns out to be wrong. What we will not do is draft "I am unmarried" for somebody who has told us otherwise — at any price, for any destination.
Most of the delay on these files is created before anyone drafts anything. These five questions, answered first, remove almost all of it.
Write the answers down and keep them with the file. When the document comes back from a step, the next person handling it needs the same five answers — and on a chain with four or five offices in it, the single commonest cause of a lost month is that nobody wrote them down.
| What you need | Usual time |
|---|---|
| Notarised affidavit only | Same day — drafted, stamped, notarised and sent to you |
| With SDM verification | Commonly around a week, depending on the office and the district |
| With MEA apostille | Usually one to two weeks in total, including authentication |
| With embassy legalisation | Add the embassy's own timeline, which varies widely by country |
We give you a realistic date at the start rather than the best possible one, and we tell you the moment something slips. Government timelines are not ours to promise.
Inside India the affidavit does not expire — it speaks as on the date it was sworn, and it remains evidence of what you declared on that date. Abroad it is treated differently: most registrars, embassies and immigration offices want a recent one, and in practice that usually means sworn within the last three to six months. If your wedding date moves by a season, swearing a fresh affidavit is almost always cheaper and faster than arguing with a registrar about an old one.
Affidavit, SDM verification, MEA apostille and, where needed, the embassy step — as one job, with one person answering your calls. Tell us the country and the date, and we will work backwards from it.
Order Now — Free WhatsApp usNone of these are difficult to avoid. All of them are expensive to fix from another country, which is why we spend the first conversation on the requirement rather than on the price.
We are a documentation and legal-services firm in Delhi. For this document our part is straightforward: we establish what the receiving office wants, draft the affidavit in that form, check it against your passport, prepare it on the correct stamp paper, have it notarised, and take it through authentication and apostille if you need that. You get a soft copy to check and the hard copy by hand or by courier.
Two things we hold to. You pay nothing in advance — placing an order is free, we confirm the wording and the full cost first, and payment comes after the document is ready. And we do not draft a declaration we know to be untrue, whatever the reason offered. Everything else is negotiable; those two are not.
Order online in a minute. No account, no advance payment, and a real person calls you back to confirm the wording before anything is printed.
Order Single Status Affidavit +91 98913 43962Tell us in one line what the office has asked for. We will tell you which document that is, what it costs, and how long it will take — before you pay anything.
Two doors, both free. Clients search a factual directory of enrolled advocates. Advocates apply to be listed on it — no fee, no commission, nothing paid in either direction.
Search Bar Council enrolled advocates by what your matter is about, by court, or by city. Searching and sending a request are both free.
Enrolled advocates anywhere in India can apply to be listed. Your entry is published only after we verify your enrolment number with your State Bar Council.
This directory carries no ratings, no reviews, no rankings and no fees — only the factual particulars the Bar Council of India permits, published at each advocate's own request. Browse the network · Terms for Advocates