American Birth Certificate
Sunday, March 30, 2008
We’ve had several people ask us if we are going to do a re-adoption in the U.S. so Liam can have an American birth certificate. The answer is yes, this is something that we definitely want to do as soon as we figure out what we need to do.
One of the families we met in Moscow is from San Antonio and they’ve already re-adopted their son and they gave us the name of their attorney but stated that one parent had to appear at the courthouse with the lawyer. With that in mind, I think we’re going to have to try to find an attorney locally that can handle this for us.
If anybody has done this and has any advice, we’d love to hear it!
One of the families we met in Moscow is from San Antonio and they’ve already re-adopted their son and they gave us the name of their attorney but stated that one parent had to appear at the courthouse with the lawyer. With that in mind, I think we’re going to have to try to find an attorney locally that can handle this for us.
If anybody has done this and has any advice, we’d love to hear it!
posted by Dede at 10:52 PM
6 Comments:
Dede,
There is a father on the Russian Adoption Forum who has published step-by-step instructions on Texas re-adoption. It's something that y'all can do yourselves(especially after doing all of the Russian adoption paperwork!). If you can't find the link, I think I saved a copy of the instructions somewhere. Lori
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Lori beat me to the punch! I was going to ask you if Texas would allow you to do it yourself. I've gotten a lot of GA information from the International Adopt GA group - they should have one for TX too. Congrats on getting the SS card. I hope I can be as organized and on top of things when I get home! :-)
Lori / Becky - where do I find the Russian adoption forum for Texas?
It's not the Texas forum, it's this one:
http://forums.adoption.com/russia-adoption/
Here are the instructions (sorry -- quite long!):
Here are the instructions as posted by a member last year:
For our daughter's Texas birth certificate we printed forms and turned them in at our local courthouse, were assigned a court date and received the actual birth certificate – hooray! To start, go to the website for Texas Department of State Health Services: Texas Department of State Health Services
Click on Birth/Death Certificates, Request Processing, General Info – forms, Adoption forms and print the forms: Certificate of Adoption and Instructions, Validation Order, Validation Petition.
First we completed the Validation Petition form APPLICATION FOR ORDER RECOGNIZING VALIDITY OF FOREIGN DECREE OF ADOPTION, NOTARIAL ACT OF ADOPTION, AND FOR CHANGE OF NAME. Even though hername was already changed by the Russian court we still had to fill it out again as a name change in part IV. We attached photocopies of the adoption decree, birth certificate and adoption certificate, and we attached both the translated and Russian pages. At the bottom of the page we crossed out the words “Attorney for the” and both signed above the line as Petitioners. We also filled out the information we could on the ORDER which is what the judge actually signs. We took this paperwork to the District Clerk’s Office at the county courthouse where someone accepted the papers and gave us a copy of both documents with their stamp on it. We paid the fees and were given a name of the Court Coordinator in our district and told to call her in a week to see when our court date would be. Following are the fees we paid:
District Clerk Filing Fee/Adoption $ 51
State Fee/Family Cases 45
ADR/DC 10
Record Preservation Fund/DC 10
Courthouse Security/DC 5
Law Library Fund/DC 20
Sheriff’s Jury Fee/DC 5
Court Reporter Fee/DC 15
TOTAL $161
The next step was to fill out the CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION and we were told to take that to court with us. We completed Sections 1 and 2 then the rest is ok if you don’t know the information, just put “not known” (we filled in the agency info). After waiting a week I called the Court Coordinator and she told us a date and time for the court hearing. When the appointed time arrived we took Julia with us and went to court. The judge asked a few questions just to verify names and information then he completed the ORDER and gave the file to a clerk and we were finished. I did give him the CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION and told him we were told to give it to him and he just put it in the file. So we left.
After a few days I called the judge’s clerk to see what happens next. She said to come right down and get a certified copy of the signed ORDER because it would be sealed and then we would never get a copy! (Whew, glad I called! This is where a lawyer would have known what to do!) So I went right down to the courthouse and the clerk made 4 certified copies for me where they stamped the bottom and marked it with the seal. She also filled out Section 4 on the CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION.
The next step was for us to follow mailing instructions on CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION INSTRUCTIONS (under Section 4). So we mailed the CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION and one certified copy of the ORDER (will keep other 3 copies in safe deposit box with Russian originals) to Texas Vital Statistics. We were told to include a check for $36, which is the $25 for BORN IN TEXAS OR FOREIGN COUNTRY and $11 for ONE CERTIFIED COPY OF NEW BIRTH RECORD. We were told it takes 10-12 weeks to get the Texas birth certificate and we actually received the birth certificate after 10 weeks.
Lori - thanks for the info! This will help a lot, I'll start looking into doing it myself.
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