Birth Certificate: How to Get a Copy

Getting a birth certificate is quite easy. You can simply request a copy of it (as well as other vital records) from appropriate offices present in every state and territory of the United States.

Birth Certificate: What to Do When You're Adopted

The first thing you should do is to check the adoption laws in your state. Some states make it just about as easy to access your birth certificate when you're adopted as when you aren't. If you were born out of state, it could also be simple enough if you know the name of your birth mother.

Nowadays, many adoptive parents are open-minded enough to recognize the psychological and emotional benefits of reuniting adopted persons with their birth parents. So, adopted persons normally get their first clue as to their birth parents' identities from the parents who raised them.

How you access your birth certificate will generally depend on state policies. In California, for instance, each adopted individual will have two birth records.

The first birth certificate, which bears the name of the birth mother, was issued when the child was born. The second birth certificate was issued upon approval by the court of the Petition for Adoption. This document bears the name of the adoptive parents.

These birth records will likely have completely different data, down to the child's name. But what is remarkable is that each birth certificate will show the same exact certificate number! These government record-keeping nuances are what reunion services use to find the birth families of the people who hire them to perform a search.

Thus, if you intend to do a birth parents lookup by yourself, knowing state policies will be a crucial factor. Another important matter to look into is the policy of the adoption agency your parents used. Many adoption agencies have their own reunion registries and, if both parties are willing, meeting up shouldn't be a problem.

Birth Certificate: Straight to a Birth Parents Lookup

Another good way to conduct a birth parents lookup, albeit a passive one, is to become a member of a reunion registry – either US-based or international.

Much like adoption agency registries, only wider in scope, reunion registries allow adopted persons and birth parents to register to show that they're looking for each other. Once a match happens, the people running the registry will share contact information to assist in setting up a meeting.

The biggest registry of this kind is the International Soundex Reunion Registry, which is available to all interested parties of legal age.

Recognizing that facilities for finding birth mothers are more sufficient than those for locating birth fathers, the state of Minnesota also created a Father's Adoption Registry.

Such registries have normalized birth parents lookup and reunions, somewhat. What's more, they've done a lot towards giving the family members involved in the adoption process more choices in determining the quality of their relationships.

The National Center for Health Statistics' Center for Disease Control website has a complete list of the right office to contact in all American territories. Visit their website and click on the territory to learn which state government office to contact and how much to pay.

To know more about how to get a copy of your birth certificate on any U.S. state, check out RecordsSiteReview’s Birth Records section.