Request By:
Mr. Clifford F. Haley, Jr.
Bullitt County Judge Executive
Shepherdsville, Kentucky 40165
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You request the opinion of this office as to whether your deputy county judge executive may perform a marriage.
KRS 402.050 sets forth who may solemnize marriages in Kentucky:
(1) Marriage shall be solemnized only by:
(a) Ministers of the gospel or priests of any denomination in regular communion with any religious society;
(b) Judges of the circuit court, county judges/executive, judges of the district court and such justices of the peace as the governor or the county judge/executive authorizes; or
(c) A religious society that has no officiating minister or priest and whose usage is to solemnize marriage at the usual place of worship and by consent given in the presence of the society, if either party belongs to the society.
We assume that your deputy does not fit any of the categories of persons listed in KRS 402.050(1)(a) through (c), unless he is authorized, as a matter of law, to perform marriages solely because he is your deputy.
Let us examine the powers of a deputy county judge executive as found in KRS 67.711:
Notwithstanding the provisions of KRS 67.710(7) the county judge/executive of any county may appoint a deputy who shall serve at his pleasure. Such deputy may exercise all administrative powers, duties, and responsibilities of that office, and may assume such other responsibilities as shall be prescribed in the administrative code of the county, except that the deputy county judge/executive shall not act for the county judge/executive as a member or presiding officer of the fiscal court.
The intent here was to give the deputy, if called upon by you, the power to exercise all duties and powers which you can exercise as county judge executive, but only as relates to county government. The inclusion of the county judge executive in KRS 402.050, as one of those who can solemnize marriages in Kentucky, has no relation to county government. The performing of a marriage is not a county governmental act. Actually a person who solemnizes a marriage is acting as an officer of the state in carrying out that part of the marriage law.
Ladd v. Commonwealth, Ky., 233 S.W.2d 517 (1950).
Thus a deputy county judge executive, as such, has no authority to solemnize a marriage in Kentucky.