2025 Texas sessionsRegular and both called sessions have ended. This index covers House and Senate bills, not resolutions. Statuses come from official reports.

2025 · Regular session · House bill

HB1193

HB1193 adds a checkbox to the declaration-and-registration form for an informal marriage: “Yes, please keep the identifying information on this form confidential.” Either party may check it.

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Official caption: Relating to the confidentiality of certain information on a declaration of informal marriage.

Signed by governorSource-checked explanation published

Official report lists House author(s): Manuel, LaHood, Ordaz, Pierson. This does not identify sponsors or amendment drafters.

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Bill explanation published · Version and amendment review scope is stated below · Individual amendment records may not be separately annotated.

Bill highlights

Selected points from the published explanation. Follow each point to its source-linked context; conditions and limits may matter.

HB1193 adds a checkbox to the declaration-and-registration form for an informal marriage: “Yes, please keep the identifying information on this form confidential.” Either party may check it.
When the box is checked, the county clerk may not publicly publish either party's personally identifying information other than their names.
The parties' names remain outside this new confidentiality protection: The act does not seal the entire marriage record, automatically protect every declaration, or retroactively redact earlier declarations.

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What does it do?

HB1193 adds a checkbox to the declaration-and-registration form for an informal marriage: “Yes, please keep the identifying information on this form confidential.” Either party may check it. The protection applies to declarations executed on or after September 1, 2025; older declarations remain governed by prior law. Final law

When the box is checked, the county clerk may not publicly publish either party’s personally identifying information other than their names. The clerk also may not release a declaration copy containing that protected information to anyone except a named party or that party’s legal representative. The state’s vital statistics unit is similarly barred from furnishing personally identifying information in its marriage records, other than the parties’ names, to outsiders.

The parties’ names remain outside this new confidentiality protection. The act does not seal the entire marriage record, automatically protect every declaration, or retroactively redact earlier declarations. It requires an affirmative checkbox choice; it does not require a party to establish victim status to make that choice.

What changed along the way?

The introduced bill was broader in one way and narrower in another: it covered marriage-license applications and licenses as well as informal-marriage declarations, but described the privacy option for victims of family violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking.

The House committee substitute removed the ordinary marriage-license provisions and removed the victim-status wording from the informal-marriage checkbox. That narrower record scope and broader opt-in availability survived unchanged in the engrossed, Senate committee and final texts. The official amendment index lists no floor amendments. Do not describe the original marriage-license proposal as enacted law.

Governor Abbott signed HB1193 June 20, 2025; it took effect September 1. Final passage was 119–13 in the House, with one present but not voting, and 31–0 in the Senate. History · Text versions · Introduced · House substitute · Engrossed · Senate committee · Amendment index

For the full amendment record, open the official amendment index.

Official bill versions

Compare the published text versions in the official text index. A change is not attributed to a specific amendment here without a verified record.

Who could benefit—and who could bear the costs?

People filing qualifying declarations can reduce public access to identifying details while their names remain available under this act. That may be particularly useful to people with privacy or safety concerns, but the law does not guarantee anonymity or remove information already available elsewhere. Clerks and state record staff must honor the choice when publishing or releasing records; outside requesters receive less identifying information when it is exercised.

The final indexed Legislative Budget Board note anticipates no significant state or local-government fiscal impact, while recognizing one-time software-vendor changes and state technology work for the Texas Electronic Vital Events Registrar system, including testing, deployment and verification. It assumes those costs can be absorbed with existing resources and gives no quantified two-year/five-year total. The introduced note covered the broader discarded marriage-license proposal; the House-substitute and engrossed notes reflect the informal-marriage scope. Introduced fiscal note · House-substitute note · Engrossed note

Official sources

Catalog report retrieved 2026-10-25. Check the official record for corrections or later changes.