Inability to Locate Divorce Record (StAG 5)
Hello all,
I have spent the last 18 months or so very slowly gathering the documents I'll need for my family's StAG 5 citizenship applications. I am almost at the end, but I have been unable to locate a record of my German great-grandmother's first divorce, and I wondered how significant this would be, as proof of marriage and divorce seems like helpful evidence.
For brief context, my German great-grandmother married a naturalised British citizen (himself originally a half-Austrian, half-Polish Jewish man who lost Austrian / German citizenship owing to the Nazi race laws, and who fought in the British army, becoming a naturalised British citizen at some point prior to 1948). They married in 1948, and my great-grandmother became a British citizen upon their marriage. I have found her on the British electoral register from 1948, which she could only be as a British citizen.
My grandmother was then born in 1951, but to a different father. My great-grandmother married my great-grandfather the following year, in 1952. Ergo, my great-grandmother divorced her first husband at some point between 1948 and 1952.
In Britain, the Central Family Courts at Bury St. Edmunds hold all of these records, and you can pay them (65 pounds!!!) to search for you. I did so, and they could not locate a record of my great-grandmother's divorce at any time between 1948 and 1958. I have also written to the local authority where the divorce was processed, but they only hold records back as far as 1968.
In short, beyond paying another 65 pounds and asking again (and I'm not sure what I would ask differently - in my original request I gave both possible surnames, as the Austrian-Polish man Anglicised his name just before the marriage, so my great-grandmother sometimes appears in records with a Polish surname), I don't think I can find it. I did think that I could include as part of my documentation the letter I received in the post, telling me that the divorce record could not be located? And mention it in my covering letter to the BVA. That way they'll know I've not left it out carelessly, but having looked for it.
Would anyone think this would be a problem, or if my proposed course of action sounds sensible? Thank you! :)