Ballarat divorces 1890-1924

VPRS 552/P0 Unit 6 Dawson v Dawson 1915 listing 18 documents

VPRS 552/P0 consists of 23 boxes of divorce case files heard at the Ballarat Courts dating from 1890 to 1958, but not all are open to researchers.

The first 8 boxes with a date range 1890 to 1924 account for 200 files and have now been indexed by volunteers from the Ballarat and District Genealogical Society.

From 1925 to 1958 the Ballarat divorce records were closed to view but as at July 2016 the years 1925 to 1935 are now on Open Access. The Society does not need to index this decade because we have been advised that it is searchable by surname of the Petitioner. When ordering on the PROV website type in the VPRS number 552 and instead of the Unit number, type the surname in that box.

Refer to the following index which gives the names of the petitioner for the divorce, the respondent, any co-respondents to the petition, the year of the divorce and the case number assigned by the Court.

This index also gives the series (VPRS) and the box (unit) in which the record is found.

Researchers will need to order the series and the unit and look for the record by its case number, e.g., VPRS 552/P0, Unit 8 (and the file will be found in numerical order).