The General Register Office for England and Wales (GRO) is the section of the United Kingdom HM Passport Office responsible for the civil registration of births, adoptions, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths in England and Wales and for those same events outside the UK if they involve a UK citizen and qualify to be registered in various miscellaneous registers. With a small number of historic exceptions involving military personnel, it does not deal with records of such events occurring within the land or territorial waters of Scotland, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland; those entities' registration systems have always been separate from England and Wales.
A Nonconformist register is broadly similar to a parish register, but deriving from a nonconformist church or chapel.
A register office or The General Register Office, much more commonly but erroneously registry office, is a British government office where births, deaths, marriages, civil partnership, stillbirths and adoptions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are registered. It is the licensed local of civil registry.
A marriage certificate is an official statement that two people are married. In most jurisdictions, a marriage certificate is issued by a government official only after the civil registration of the marriage.
Marriage in New Zealand is governed by an Act of Parliament. The minimum marriage age is 18 years, or 16 years with consent of the Family Court. Polygamous marriages are not permitted in New Zealand. There are prohibitions of marriages between some relatives and some who are already in a civil union.
R v Registrar General ex parte Segerdal and another was a court case heard by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, which was instrumental in determining whether the Church of Scientology was to be considered a bona fide religion in England and Wales, and by extension what defines a religion in English law. The case, heard in 1969–70, focused on the question of whether a chapel at the Scientologists' UK headquarters should be registered as a meeting place for religious worship under an 1855 law. The Church's initial application was refused and it appealed the case to the courts, arguing that Scientology was a genuine religion and that it used the chapel for religious purposes. In dismissing the appeal, the Court of Appeal found that Scientology's practices "did not reveal any form whatever of worship". Ten years later, the Segerdal ruling was drawn upon to define a religion for the purposes of English common law as requiring "faith in a god and worship of that god". The Segerdal ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013 who redefined the term "religion" in a modern context and ruled that Scientology is to be recognised as a religion in the UK.
A civil, or registrar, ceremony is a non-religious legal marriage ceremony performed by a government official or functionary. In the United Kingdom, this person is typically called a registrar. In the United States, civil ceremonies may be performed by town, city, or county clerks, judges or justices of the peace, or others possessing the legal authority to support the marriage as the wedding officiant.
Brighton and Hove National Spiritualist Church, known until 2019 as Brighton National Spiritualist Church, is a Spiritualist place of worship in the Carlton Hill area of Brighton, part of the English seaside city of Brighton and Hove. Since its amalgamation with another church in the city in November 2019, it has been one of England's largest Spiritualist churches.
The Protestant Dissenters Act was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom regarding places of worship for Protestant Dissenters. It replaced the requirement of the Toleration Act 1689 to register such places of worship with the Clerk of the Peace or a settlement's Anglican bishop or archdeacon with registration with the Registrar General. It also gave every clerk of the peace three months after the Act's passing to make a return of all such places of worship registered under the old system.
