I have recently looked at two aspects of marriages in my ONS that cause me to question how marriages may be recorded. Firstly, a couple who lived together for two years, then married and continue to live together. The wife now states that the marriage (in England) has been annulled without giving details. How is Annullment dealt with in the records - since the marriage would have appeared in the GRO listings, would it now have been removed? And if one applied for a copy of the marriage certificate using the original GRO reference, would one get it, or a statement explaining it had been invalidated, or what? Secondly I have two instances of adoption in the USA where the birth registrations have been changed. In both cases the respective mothers had a child by a first marriage, which was registered as usual. The couples then divorced and re-married, the second fathers legally adopting the children in question. The births were then re-registered changing the children's surnames, giving the adoptive father's names as the actual fathers, with their ages and occupations at the date of birth and naming the fathers as Informants of the births. In other words, there is no evidence that there has been a change of the fathers, and the only indication I can see is that the date of Filing is a few years after the births. In fact it appears that the State in question has knowingly sanctioned deliberately untrue Certificates. Now I can see that this may be desirable in some cases, but surely is very questionable, and I know one of the children had great problems obtaining a Passport when the difference in dates was noticed. If this has happened, is there any paper trail that would enable the original birth details to be found? Adrian