How can I obtain my original birth certificate in Utah? Well, there are a couple of ways. First, contact vital records located in Salt Lake City. You can look them up online and request an original birth certificate. It will cost you about 60 dollars, and each additional copy will be About ten dollars more per copy.
Second, make sure you make any necessary changes. When we adopted each of our four children, we added our last name to their given names. They were all under the age of five, so they hadn’t yet started elementary school. I wanted original birth certificates with accurate names on them in order to avoid confusion or setback in registering them for school, filing taxes, ordering new social security numbers, etc. Our domestic adoptions were not a problem in getting this done. As we were finalizing our adoptions, we requested through our attorney’s office a petition to the court for an original birth certificate with the necessary changes made to their names.
Our fourth adoption was an international adoption from Ghana, Africa. It was an intense 19 months of our lives, and honestly, I hadn’t thought about an original birth certificate from the state of Utah at all. We filed so many documents and had everything officially done internationally. I was surprised one day to find myself really thinking seriously about the fact that we had an original birth certificate from Ghana, Africa, and not one from Utah. I reached out to our attorney’s office and started asking them questions about the process that would need to take place to re-adopt our daughter in the state of Utah as well as getting a Utah birth certificate.
We had to submit our adoption decree from Ghana, our birth certificate from Ghana, as well as our USCIS documents (immigration and homeland security). Our attorney first told us that even though we had finalized our adoption in Ghana, we would need to go through the finalization process again in Utah. We waited six months, then petitioned the court. Our attorney’s office, however, wasn’t sure of the laws in Utah and wanted us to go through the entire finalization process again. We had just paid a ridiculous amount of money to get this little lady home, and the thought of paying to have our home study and post-placement visits redone because our social worker had just retired made me sick.
I begged our attorney’s secretary to submit the documents I had given her and petition the local judge to see what he said. We waited about three weeks. I never stepped foot in the courtroom for our original birth certificate and re-adoption in the State of Utah. The documents were mailed directly to me with the correct amount of copies that I had requested.
Are you ready to pursue adoption? Visit Adoption.org or call 1-800-ADOPT-98 to connect with compassionate, nonjudgmental adoption specialists who can help you get started on the journey of a lifetime.
