Marrying an inmate often presents a special challenge for the couple when they try to do this through the prison system. The vast majority of our couples have tried to get married at the prison and have been unable due to many roadblocks.

 

We are happy to help them achieve their goal of successfully getting married in a timely manner, which they are able to do using our proxy service. These couples generally have the highest amount of stress and we understand that. It takes a lot of faith, patience and trust on the part of both to make marriage with an incarcerated spouse strong and lasting. There can be stigma attached, judgment from friends and family, distrust, insecurity and accusations from the spouses themselves and they both have to work much harder than normal couples.

 

We have done many incarcerated proxy marriages and learned so much from our couples, and can pass along a little bit of advice for consideration.

 

First, before getting married, make sure you have been in a relationship for a good length of time and can trust each other. There are a lot of scammers who use the incarcerated proxy marriage as a means to extract money from an unsuspecting spouse. They may have one or more other people they are doing this to at the same time. We want to protect against that. There is also a scam going around where the incarcerated individual offers to marry someone from another country so they can come to the USA and get a visa, in exchange for money. We do not offer services for foreign country/incarcerated proxy marriages, so please be aware of that.

 

Second, consider how long your spouse will be incarcerated - if it is more than 5 years is this something you can live with? You have a very hard and lonely road ahead without financial help. If you have children together and knew each other before your partner was incarcerated it is one thing, but if you met while the person was incarcerated, you need to consider carefully what the benefits are for you and any children you may have before making this life decision. It takes tremendous fortitude and character to commit to this in the long run and we can honestly say that the lovliest people we have married have always been the incarcerated couples. 

 

Third, power of attorney. It's a smart thing to have for your spouse so you can make financial, health and other decisions, plus advocate for them while they are incarcerated. However, you should give power of attorney for yourself to your children, siblings or parents until your spouse gets out of prison. It's just common sense and protects you and your family a bit better. 

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Again, these are just some things to think about. We want you both to feel cherished, loved and cared for under difficult circumstances. You are both taking a leap of faith - much more so than the average couple and that says a lot about the love you have for each other. As we say in our ceremony, Love is Patient, Love is Kind, Love never Fails.