Divorced or widowed: what actually changes when you remarry civilly in Mexico

1. Read this first

A second caveat specific to this page, and it is the interesting one. On this subject the published counter paperwork is behind the law in at least one documented case, and we show you where. Where a statute has been repealed but a municipal sheet still asks for the repealed thing, the practical answer is usually to satisfy the sheet rather than argue the statute at the window — but you should know which is which, because it changes what you can push back on.

2. The short answer, in four sentences

• You produce one extra document: the divorce decree or divorce certificate, or the deceased spouse's death certificate.
• If it was issued abroad it needs an apostille and a translation by a perito traductor authorised by the judiciary of that specific Mexican state — the same chain your birth certificate takes.
• There is no waiting period. Not in Quintana Roo, not in Baja California Sur, not in Jalisco, not in Nayarit. Each state's bar was repealed or invalidated, and section 5 gives the article and the date for each.
• Nothing in any of the four states' published requirement lists demands that a foreign divorce be homologated by a Mexican court before you marry. That is not the same as a guarantee — see section 7.

Everything after this is the evidence for those four statements, because on this particular subject the internet is confidently wrong and you are entitled to check our work.

3. The one extra document, state by state

Three of the four states put this in a statute. The fourth does not put it anywhere, and asks for it at the counter anyway.

3.1 Baja California Sur — in the Civil Code, explicitly

Article 100 fraction VI of the Código Civil for Baja California Sur requires the marriage application to be accompanied by a certified copy of “the death certificate of the deceased spouse if either of the parties is widowed, or of the operative part of the divorce or annulment judgment, where either of the applicants has been married previously.” Article 99 fraction I separately requires the application itself to state the name of the previous spouse, the cause of the dissolution, and the date it occurred.

Official Código Civil de BCS, texto vigente BOGE 31-05-2026 (Congreso del Estado), corroborated in the TSJ BCS consolidation of 10 May 2023 (PDF) and the 2011 consolidation (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

The BCS state registry adds two things the code does not: a constancia de inexistencia de matrimonio issued in BCS, plus a second one from your state of origin if you were born elsewhere — and, for foreign documents, that they be “apostilled and translated into Spanish by a perito authorised by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia BCS.” If you are foreign, read that inexistencia requirement carefully with the office: it is written for people born in another Mexican state.

Official registrocivil.bcs.gob.mx — registro de matrimonios — checked 16 Sep 2026

3.2 Nayarit — in the Civil Code and on the state trámite sheet

Article 94 fraction VI of the Código Civil para el Estado de Nayarit uses almost the same wording as BCS: a copy of the death certificate of the deceased spouse if either party is widowed, or of the operative part of the divorce or annulment judgment where either has been married before. Article 93 fraction I requires the application to state the circumstance and to record “the instrument by which the lawful dissolution of that union is proved, and the date of it.”

Official Código Civil de Nayarit, Arts. 93 fr. I and 94 fr. VI, última enmienda P.O. 17-12-2025 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

Nayarit is also the only one of the four that says it plainly on the public-facing trámite sheet: “If the applicants are divorced, they must present a divorce certificate; if widowed, present a death certificate.” The same sheet handles the foreign case generically — foreign birth certificates must be “apostilled or legalised as applicable.”

Official tramites.nayarit.gob.mx — ficha 192, registro de matrimonio — checked 16 Sep 2026

3.3 Jalisco — in the registry law rather than the Civil Code

Jalisco puts it in Article 82 fraction VI of the Ley del Registro Civil del Estado de Jalisco: a copy of the death certificate of the deceased spouse if a party is widowed, or the divorce certificate, or a certified copy of a final judgment of ineffectiveness, invalidity or illicitness of the marriage, where either applicant was married before. Note the drafting: Jalisco names the acta de divorcio — the registry certificate — first, and the judgment only for the annulment-type cases.

Official Ley del Registro Civil del Estado de Jalisco, Art. 82 fr. VI (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

Puerto Vallarta's municipal sheet then adds a clock the state law does not have: divorced or widowed applicants must present their divorce or death certificate in the original, no more than one year old. The same sheet requires foreign documents apostilled or legalised and translated “by peritos authorised within Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.” That one-year ceiling is municipal. Neither the Ley del Registro Civil nor the Jalisco Civil Code publishes any expiry on these documents, and neither do Quintana Roo or Baja California Sur.

Official puertovallarta.gob.mx — requisitos registro de matrimonio (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026. Every other clock in the packet, sorted by which dies first →

3.4 Quintana Roo — not in the statute at all

This is the genuinely surprising one. Article 682 of the Código Civil for Quintana Roo lists, exhaustively, what accompanies a marriage application: fraction I, the birth certificate, official ID or passport and the CURP; fraction II, derogated (POE 23 July 2026); fraction III, a copy of any dispensation of impediments. There is no fraction requiring a divorce decree or a death certificate.

Official Código Civil de Quintana Roo, Art. 682, última reforma POE 23-07-2026 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

What the code does have is Article 700 fraction X, which makes “a subsisting marriage with a person other than the one with whom the marriage is intended” an impediment. So the impediment is an undissolved prior marriage — but the code never names the document that proves dissolution, and leaves that to the oficialía.

The two big Riviera Maya oficialías then disagree with each other. Cozumel requires it: “where either of the parties has been married previously, attach two copies of the divorce certificate.” Playa del Carmen's foreigner-marriage sheet, updated 29 January 2026, lists nine requirements and a divorce decree is not one of them — though it does require the foreign birth certificate apostilled or legalised and translated by a perito certified in the state of Quintana Roo.

Official cozumel.gob.mx — registro de matrimonio mixto; playadelcarmen.gob.mx — MPDC-SG-RC-MEO-010 — checked 16 Sep 2026

The planning conclusion is straightforward and slightly annoying: bring the document apostilled and translated regardless of state, because the one state that does not require it in law requires it at half of its counters, and you cannot obtain it from abroad once you have landed.

4. The apostille and perito traductor chain

4.1 The apostille

Mexico has been a party to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents since 14 August 1995 — a date the Mexican government states in its own terms in the Diario Oficial: from that date, contracting states exempt covered public documents from legalisation and require the apostille as the only formality.

Official hcch.net — Apostille Convention status table; DOF 10-01-2025 — Acuerdo SRE on legalisation and apostille; gob.mx/sre — apostilla de documentos — checked 16 Sep 2026

For this chain that means: a US divorce decree is apostilled by the Secretary of State of the state that issued it; a Canadian one goes through Canada's authentication route. A decree from a country outside the Convention takes consular legalisation instead — which is exactly the distinction Nayarit's ficha draws when it says “apostilled or legalised as applicable.”

One practical trap that has nothing to do with Mexico: in many US states the document the court hands you is a decree signed by a judge, while the apostille authority will only apostille a document bearing a state or county clerk's certification. Ask the issuing court for a certified copy in the form your Secretary of State will accept, not just a copy of the decree.

4.2 The translation — and why a “certified translator” is not enough

All four states require translation by a perito traductor authorised by that state's judiciary. Not a translator certified by a professional association, not a notarised translation from home, and not a perito from a different Mexican state. The registers are public and you can check a name before you pay:

• Quintana Roo — live Lista de Peritos Vigentes search portal run by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia. Playa del Carmen additionally wants the passport itself translated by a state-certified perito if it is not in Spanish.
• Baja California Sur — perito authorised by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia BCS. The appointment is annual: renewal is filed during February, costs $1,500.00, takes up to 15 business days to resolve, and the resulting tarjetón is valid one year.
• Jalisco — the Consejo de la Judicatura publishes the Lista de Auxiliares de la Administración de Justicia, which includes translators, by judicial district. Puerto Vallarta narrows it further to peritos within the municipality.
• Nayarit — the Poder Judicial's Padrón de Peritos y Auxiliares has a dedicated section for peritos traductores e intérpretes.

Official peritos.tsjqroo.gob.mx; tribunalbcs.gob.mx — trámite SG-03, refrendo de perito; CJJ — lista de auxiliares 2026–2027 (PDF); Poder Judicial de Nayarit — padrón de peritos 2026–2027 (PDF); playadelcarmen.gob.mx MEO-010 — checked 16 Sep 2026

The counter-intuitive consequence, which we set out at greater length on the timing page: no state puts an expiry on the translation itself, but every state's perito appointments run in annual terms. A translation commissioned a year early is not stale; a translation sealed by a perito whose appointment has since lapsed is a risk nobody's published norm resolves. The full treatment of that problem →

5. The waiting period: repealed, struck down, article by article

Here is the claim in its usual form: a divorced woman must wait 300 days before remarrying in Mexico, sometimes rendered as one year, sometimes as two. It was true once, in every one of these states. It is true in none of them now. Each died a different death, so we take them one at a time with the article number, the mechanism and the date.

5.1 Quintana Roo — Article 702, derogated 29 February 2016

The repealed text, quoted verbatim in the Congress's own committee report: “Article 702. A woman may not contract a new marriage until three hundred days have passed after the dissolution of the previous one, unless within that period she gives birth to a child or fully proves by medical opinion that she is not pregnant. In cases of annulment or divorce, this time may be counted from when cohabitation was interrupted.”

The XIV Legislature derogated Article 702 outright, derogated Article 796 fraction III — which had made a marriage celebrated inside that window illicit but not void — and reformed Article 876 to strip its cross-reference. The committee's stated purpose is not ambiguous: to guarantee a woman's right not to be discriminated against by reason of gender, and to let her exercise her right to remarry freely “without having to wait any term at all” once the previous marriage is dissolved.

Official Congreso de Quintana Roo — dictamen con minuta de decreto, XIV Legislatura (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

The current code confirms every part of it: Art. 702 — Derogado, POE 29-02-2016; Art. 796 now runs only to fractions I and II; Art. 823, “by virtue of divorce, the spouses recover their entire capacity to contract a new marriage”; and Art. 824, spouses divorced from one another may remarry each other at any time.

Official Código Civil de Quintana Roo, Arts. 702, 796, 823, 824 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

5.2 Nayarit — Article 154, derogated 19 July 2017

The current code reads, in the run of articles on requirements for marriage: “Artículo 154.— DEROGADO, P.O. 19 DE JULIO DE 2017.” The impediments list at Article 152 contains eleven fractions — age, consanguinity, affinity, attempt on a spouse's life, force or grave fear, incapacity, a subsisting marriage, failure to take the pre-marital course — and no waiting period after divorce or widowhood appears among them. Article 282 states the rule affirmatively: the spouses may contract a new marriage once the divorce judgment becomes final.

Official Código Civil de Nayarit, Arts. 152, 154, 282 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

5.3 Jalisco — two separate bars, and the Supreme Court had to kill the second one

Jalisco is the case worth understanding in full, because it shows a legislature removing a discriminatory rule and accidentally leaving a different unconstitutional rule standing in its place.

First bar. Article 270 was the classic gendered version, with a Jalisco flourish: a woman could not remarry within 300 days unless she gave birth or proved non-pregnancy through a public-health physician's report to the Consejo de Familia of her domicile. It was derogated by decree published 5 September 2015, and the current code reads simply “Artículo 270.— Se deroga.” The repealed text is quoted in the Supreme Court's own judgment in the case below.

Second bar. In November 2018, while abolishing fault-based divorce, the Jalisco Congress rewrote Article 420 to read: “By virtue of divorce, the spouses recover their entire capacity to contract a new marriage, it being indispensable that one year have passed since they obtained the divorce.” Gender-neutral, and now applied to every divorce rather than only consensual ones. The Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos challenged it.

On 18 June 2020 the Pleno of the Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación resolved Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 113/2018. The operative points, as read into the record:

Official SCJN — versión taquigráfica del Pleno, 18 June 2020 (PDF); SCJN — engrose, Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 113/2018 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

The reasoning is worth reading because it applies well beyond Jalisco. The Court found the bar failed even on its own stated purposes. If the aim was protecting the family, prohibiting marriage for a year after divorce has no instrumental relation to that aim — the family that might in fact be forming is left without the legal protections of marriage in inheritance, tax, social security and health. If the aim was to promote respect for the institution of marriage by sanctioning those who divorced, then as a sanction it “looks to the past” and cannot produce that effect. One Justice added, separately, that the bar discriminates by estado civil — marital status — contrary to the final paragraph of Article 1 of the Constitution, because it stops divorced people from forming a family at the moment they choose.

The current Jalisco code carries both effects. Article 393 fraction II now refers only to the term fixed in Article 271 — which is the guardian-and-ward prohibition, nothing to do with divorce. The “and 420” is gone. And Article 403 states the position cleanly: divorce dissolves the marital bond and leaves those who were spouses in a position to contract another.

Official Código Civil del Estado de Jalisco, Arts. 270, 393, 403, 420 (Congreso de Jalisco, PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

5.4 Baja California Sur — Article 165, derogated, date not pinned down

BCS is the one where we can prove the outcome but not the date, and we would rather say so than round it off.

Four official consolidations of the same code, read in sequence:

• Consolidation to BOGE 06-07-2011 — the bar is in force: a woman may not remarry until 300 days have passed after dissolution, unless she gives birth within that period or presents to the Registro Civil officer a certificate from a public health centre stating she is not pregnant at the time of applying.
• Consolidation to BOGE 20-03-2022 — the bar is still in force, word for word.
• Consolidation to BOGE 27, 10-05-2023 — “Artículo 165.— Se deroga.”
• Current text at the Congress of BCS, última reforma BOGE 31-05-2026 — “Artículo 165.— Se deroga.”

Official CC BCS, consolidation to BOGE 06-07-2011 (PDF); to BOGE 20-03-2022 (PDF); to BOGE 27, 10-05-2023 (PDF); current text, Congreso del Estado de BCS — checked 16 Sep 2026

So the derogation landed somewhere between March 2022 and May 2023. We could not locate the Boletín Oficial decree number or its publication date, and we are not going to guess at one. The outcome is verified twice over, in the judiciary's consolidation and in the Congress's own current text. The state's impediments list at Article 163 has eleven fractions and no waiting period among them, and Article 312 provides that spouses who divorce voluntarily may remarry once the divorce judgment is final.

5.5 The federal text that keeps this myth alive

Here is why the rule refuses to die. The Código Civil Federal, in force today, still says at Article 158 that “a woman may not contract a new marriage until three hundred days have passed after the dissolution of the previous one”, and still says at Article 289 that the spouse who gave cause for the divorce may not remarry for two years, and that spouses who divorce voluntarily need one year.

Official Código Civil Federal, Arts. 158 and 289, última reforma DOF 14-11-2025 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

It does not govern your wedding. Civil marriage in Mexico is state jurisdiction, each of the four states has its own code, and each code applies its own law to everyone within the state including foreigners and people merely passing through. The federal text survives as the ancestor of all four repealed provisions — which is exactly why an English-language guide copying an older English-language guide keeps reproducing it.

That it is still on the federal books is itself contested. In October 2017 an initiative in the Cámara de Diputados sought to expel Article 158 from the Código Civil Federal as unconstitutional, arguing that it places the woman “below” the man, whom the norm requires to wait no time at all, and citing the First Chamber's ruling in Amparo en Revisión 1439/2016 that an impediment to marriage after the bond has been extinguished by divorce is an unjustified limit on the free development of personality.

Official Gaceta Parlamentaria, Cámara de Diputados, 26 October 2017 — checked 16 Sep 2026

6. The gender-differential rules, and what replaced them

Every bar in section 5 was originally written to apply only to women. Quintana Roo's 702, Jalisco's 270, Baja California Sur's 165 and the federal 158 they were all copied from begin with the same three words: La mujer no puede. No corresponding provision ever restricted men. Jalisco's replacement Article 420 was the only gender-neutral version, and the Supreme Court struck it down anyway.

The stated justification was always paternity: a child born soon after a dissolution and soon after a remarriage creates uncertainty about which marriage it belongs to. The Quintana Roo Congress addressed this directly and dismissed it — genetic testing now determines paternity quickly and without any discriminatory act against the woman, the child's right to investigate paternity is imprescriptible in any case, and Article 823 of its own code already restored full capacity to remarry on divorce.

What survives in all four states is the paternity presumption itself, which is a different creature and worth not confusing with a marriage bar:

• Quintana Roo, Art. 876 — where a widow, divorcee or woman whose marriage was annulled remarries within 300 days of the dissolution, the child's filiation is established by a set of rules turning on whether it is born before 180 days of the second marriage or after.
• Nayarit, Art. 327 — the same structure.
• Jalisco, Art. 466 — the same structure again.

Official CC Quintana Roo, Art. 876 (PDF); CC Nayarit, Art. 327 (PDF); CC Jalisco, Art. 466 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

These are rules a court applies after a child is born. They are not applied by a Registro Civil officer deciding whether to marry you, they impose no obligation on you before the wedding, and they do not delay anything. If you are told the 300 days still exist, this is almost certainly the provision being misread.

7. Does a foreign divorce need Mexican recognition first?

This is the question that sends people to lawyers, and the honest answer has two halves: what the statute says, and what nobody's published trámite sheet says.

7.1 What the procedural code says

Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments is federal procedural law, now set out in the Código Nacional de Procedimientos Civiles y Familiares. Three articles matter here, and they draw a line:

• Art. 1190 — recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments that entail coercion in their execution requires a homologation procedure, with both parties summoned, nine days to respond, evidence and a hearing.
• Art. 1184 — where judgments are only going to be used as evidence, it is sufficient that they meet the requirements to be considered authentic documents.
• Art. 1183 — foreign judgments that do not require recognition or homologation for their execution, and other foreign public documents, are to be recognised in accordance with international treaties and Mexican law.

Official Código Nacional de Procedimientos Civiles y Familiares, Arts. 1183, 1184, 1190, última reforma DOF 15-01-2026 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

Handing a divorce decree to a registrar to show that you are single is using it as proof. Nothing is being enforced against anyone; no asset is being seized; no person is being compelled. On the face of Article 1184, that is the authentic-document standard — which is precisely what the apostille and the perito translation deliver. We flag that as our reading of the statutory text, not as a citation to an authority that says so.

There is a timing wrinkle. The CNPCF applies gradually, entity by entity, on a declaration by each state legislature, with an outer limit of 1 April 2027. Until a given state issues its declaration, the older federal procedural framework governs there. We did not verify the declaration status for these four states.

7.2 Inscripción in the Registro Civil — a different thing, and mostly about Mexicans

There is a separate, genuinely mandatory-looking mechanism that often gets conflated with exequátur, and the distinction turns on nationality. Where a Mexican acquires a civil status abroad, the state codes require that act to be transcribed into the Mexican Registro Civil:

• BCS, CC Art. 55 — to establish the civil status acquired by Mexicans outside the Republic, the instruments the interested parties present will suffice, legalised and translated, and must be transcribed in the Registro Civil of the interested party's domicile.
• Jalisco, Ley del Registro Civil Art. 28 — the same rule, conditioned on the act having been inscribed in the relevant Registro Civil office.
• Quintana Roo, Reglamento del Registro Civil Art. 2 — the Registro Civil inscribes final judgments declaring, among other things, judicial divorce.

Official CC BCS, Art. 55; Ley del Registro Civil de Jalisco, Art. 28 (PDF); Reglamento del Registro Civil del Estado de Quintana Roo, Art. 2 (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

What that trámite actually looks like is published in detail by at least one Jalisco municipality: the foreign act apostilled or legalised, a translation signed by a perito traductor authorised by the state's Supreme Court of Justice, the birth certificate of the Mexican party to prove Mexican nationality, and official photo ID — with a listed fee line for “inscription of a foreign marriage, death or divorce certificate.” Note what the sheet says it does: “only the literal transcription of the foreign act will be carried out.” It is a transcription, not a judicial review.

Official Zapopan, Jalisco — actos del estado civil celebrados por mexicanos en el extranjero (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

8. The widowed case, which is simpler

Everything above applies, minus the complications, because a death certificate is a registry document rather than a judgment. There is nothing to homologate, nothing to recognise, no court involved. The chain is: certified death certificate → apostille → perito traductor translation in the state where you are marrying.

Three of the four states name it explicitly in statute, and one does not:

• Baja California Sur, CC Art. 100 fr. VI — certified copy of the death certificate of the deceased spouse, if either party is widowed.
• Nayarit, CC Art. 94 fr. VI, and the state ficha in plain language.
• Jalisco, Ley del Registro Civil Art. 82 fr. VI; in Puerto Vallarta, in the original and no more than a year old.
• Quintana Roo — no statutory requirement; Cozumel's published sheet addresses only divorce, not widowhood. Bring it anyway.

Two things that specifically do not apply. First, no waiting period after widowhood exists in any of the four states — the repealed articles covered dissolution generally, so their repeal covers widowhood too. Second, none of the four requires any statement or affidavit that you have not remarried since being widowed; no published state or municipal source asks for one.

One thing that does apply, and it is worth noticing: if you were widowed and are now marrying in Baja California Sur, the state registry's constancia de inexistencia de matrimonio requirement still sits on top — a BCS constancia plus one from your place of origin if you were born elsewhere. That is a rule about proving you are not currently married, and it is separate from proving how the last marriage ended.

Official registrocivil.bcs.gob.mx; CC BCS, Art. 100 fr. VI; CC Nayarit, Art. 94 fr. VI (PDF); Ley del Registro Civil de Jalisco, Art. 82 fr. VI (PDF) — checked 16 Sep 2026

9. What to do, in order

The ordering is forced by one fact: once the marriage application is filed, the wedding must happen within eight days — Código Civil de Quintana Roo Art. 683, Código Civil de Nayarit Art. 97, Código Civil de BCS Art. 101 all say the same thing. So everything slow must be finished before you file, and the divorce document is the slowest thing on your list because two of its three steps happen in another country.

Official CC Quintana Roo, Art. 683 (PDF); CC Nayarit, Art. 97 (PDF); CC BCS, Art. 101 — checked 16 Sep 2026

1. Call the specific oficialía first, not the state. Ask one question: “For a previously married foreigner, what exactly do you require to prove the previous marriage ended?” In Quintana Roo this is not a formality — the code is silent and the two municipalities we checked publish different lists.
2. Order a fresh certified copy of the decree or death certificate from the issuing court or registry. Order two. Confirm it is in the form your apostille authority accepts — in many US states that means a clerk's certification, not just a judge's signature.
3. Apostille it (or legalise it, if the issuing country is not a party to the 1961 Convention). This is the step with the least predictable queue and no published expiry, so it goes earliest.
4. Translate it in Mexico, by a perito on the correct state's register. Check the register yourself; check the perito's appointment cycle. In Puerto Vallarta, check they are within the municipality.
5. If you are Mexican and divorced abroad, do the inscripción at the Registro Civil of your domicile before anything else in this list — the record has to agree before you file a marriage application against it.
6. Then start the fast-expiring items — the prenuptial lab work, the pre-marital course constancia, the inexistencia certificates — and file last. A full schedule worked backwards from the wedding day →

If this is starting to sound like a lot, it is worth checking whether you need it at all: a symbolic ceremony in Mexico with the legal marriage done at home requires none of this. That comparison is a page in itself, and for a previously married couple it is a materially bigger saving than for anyone else — one whole document chain disappears.

10. What we could not verify

Stated plainly rather than smoothed over, because on a subject this misreported the gaps matter as much as the findings.

• The exact decree that derogated Baja California Sur's Article 165. We bracketed it between BOGE 20 March 2022 and BOGE 27 of 10 May 2023 using two official consolidations, but could not find the Boletín Oficial number, the decree number or the publication date. The derogation itself is verified twice, in the judiciary's text and the Congress's own current text.
• Whether the Código Nacional de Procedimientos Civiles y Familiares is yet in force in Quintana Roo, Baja California Sur, Jalisco or Nayarit. Each state's legislature declares its own start date, with an outer limit of 1 April 2027. Until then the older federal procedural framework governs recognition of foreign judgments there.
• Whether any of these four Registro Civil offices in practice demands homologation of a foreign divorce. No trámite sheet we read for any of the four mentions homologación, exequátur or a Mexican court order. Absence from a published sheet is not proof of absence at the window.
• Whether Cancún (Benito Juárez) requires the divorce document. We checked Playa del Carmen and Cozumel, which disagree with each other; we did not check Cancún in this pass.
• Any fee specific to the divorced or widowed path. None of the four states publishes a separate charge, and the published marriage fees appear not to vary by prior marital status — but we found no source stating that affirmatively.
• Whether a foreign death certificate must be accompanied by anything showing no remarriage since. No state text and no counter sheet asks for it; we cannot rule out that an individual office does.
• What happens if a foreign divorce is later held invalid in Mexico. That is bigamy exposure under each state's criminal code, which we did not examine and will not speculate about.

11. Every source, listed

Every source below is a government, legislative, judicial or treaty body. There are no wedding-industry, template-shop or travel sources on this page, and every URL was checked on 16 September 2026.

Legislative — state civil codes and registry laws

• Official Código Civil para el Estado de Quintana Roo, última reforma POE 23-07-2026 — documentos.congresoqroo.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Congreso de Quintana Roo — dictamen derogando el Art. 702 y el Art. 796 fr. III — XIV Legislatura (PDF)
• Official Código Civil para el Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California Sur, texto vigente BOGE 31-05-2026 — cbcs.gob.mx (Congreso del Estado)
• Official CC BCS, consolidación BOGE 06-07-2011 — contraloria.bcs.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official CC BCS, consolidación BOGE 20-03-2022 — tribunalbcs.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official CC BCS, consolidación BOGE 27, 10-05-2023 — tribunalbcs.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Código Civil del Estado de Jalisco — congresojal.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Ley del Registro Civil del Estado de Jalisco — transparencia.info.jalisco.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Código Civil para el Estado de Nayarit, última enmienda P.O. 17-12-2025 — congresonayarit.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Reglamento del Registro Civil del Estado de Quintana Roo — ordenjuridico.gob.mx (PDF)

Legislative — federal

• Official Código Civil Federal, última reforma DOF 14-11-2025 — diputados.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Código Nacional de Procedimientos Civiles y Familiares, última reforma DOF 15-01-2026 — diputados.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Gaceta Parlamentaria, Cámara de Diputados, 26-10-2017 — gaceta.diputados.gob.mx
• Official Diario Oficial de la Federación, 10-01-2025 — Acuerdo SRE on legalisation and apostille — diariooficial.gob.mx

Judicial

• Official SCJN — versión taquigráfica del Pleno, 18 June 2020 (AI 113/2018 resolutive points) — scjn.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official SCJN — engrose, Acción de Inconstitucionalidad 113/2018 — www2.scjn.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Padrón de peritos, TSJ Quintana Roo — peritos.tsjqroo.gob.mx
• Official Trámite SG-03, refrendo de perito, TSJ Baja California Sur — tribunalbcs.gob.mx
• Official Lista de auxiliares de la administración de justicia 2026–2027, Consejo de la Judicatura de Jalisco — cjj.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Padrón de peritos 2026–2027, Poder Judicial de Nayarit — tsjnay.gob.mx (PDF)

Executive, registry and municipal

• Official Registro Civil de Baja California Sur — registrocivil.bcs.gob.mx
• Official Trámites Nayarit, ficha 192 — tramites.nayarit.gob.mx
• Official Registro Civil de Jalisco (SGG) — sgg.jalisco.gob.mx
• Official H. Ayuntamiento de Playa del Carmen, MPDC-SG-RC-MEO-010 — playadelcarmen.gob.mx
• Official H. Ayuntamiento de Cozumel, matrimonio mixto — cozumel.gob.mx
• Official Puerto Vallarta, requisitos registro de matrimonio — puertovallarta.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official Zapopan, actos del estado civil celebrados por mexicanos en el extranjero — retys.zapopan.gob.mx (PDF)
• Official SRE — apostilla de documentos — gob.mx/sre

Treaty

• Official HCCH — Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents, status table — hcch.net

Related on this site

• Getting legally married in Mexico — the full state-by-state reference, with every official fee schedule and all four source conflicts set out.
• Document expiry and timing — every clock in the packet sorted by which dies fastest, including the eight-day rule that forces the ordering on this page.
• Symbolic vs civil vs religious — which ceremony actually marries you, and why a symbolic ceremony removes this entire document chain.
• Apostilling a Mexican marriage certificate — the return trip, and the reason your second marriage certificate will itself need an apostille one day.

If this saved you a phone call

This page stays free and stays up. If you want the same treatment applied to the parts of the trip a reference page does not cover — vendor contracts, deposits in pesos, the twelve-month timeline, the Spanish you need on a call with a venue — that is what the kits are. Two products, US$18 and US$24, sold on Etsy.

Questions are answered free, whether or not you buy anything.