The United States has 3,144 counties. Which means, in general, that most of the 3,144 county courts control the release (and restriction) of critical adoption records that adoptees often need for serious issues, such as proving a legal name, getting government benefits, seeking dual citizenship, or securing US citizenship or other immigration relief.
Yet there’s generally no consistent guidance, approach, or procedures for adopted people to ask a county court to release a certified copy of a simple but critical adoption record: the adoption decree. Some counties are easy. Fill out a form, pay the nominal fee for a certified copy of the decree, and you get the copy in the mail within one to two weeks. But others are ridiculously hard, if not cruel and unnecessary, and what you get often varies by county even within a single state. Take one person’s example, in a county in Minnesota. He was my client, an intercountry adoptee who was born in Korea.
Unfortunately, the county where the adoption occurred required a formal court petition, plus a $305 court filing fee simply to request the record. Yet, when simply for kicks I asked his adoptive mother to see what happens if she requested the record, she got it by filling out a form, paying a nominal fee, and voila, the record was in the mail. I have dozens of stories like this one, from all over the country, and sometimes I have to be creative to persuade state court judges why my client needs a simple and critical record (e.g., I’ve had to help an intercountry adoptee petition a county court TWICE in California to get critical documents, with very limited results—and she’s now at risk of deportation because of the court’s reluctance to provide those records).
It shouldn’t be like this. Every adopted person—whether born in the US or born abroad and adopted through a US county court—should at a minimum be able to easily obtain a certified copy of their adoption decree by providing sufficient identification and paying a small fee. And they should receive the decree on an expedited basis, if needed, or at least within one or two weeks. Because it is theirs and they need it.
I’ve started to draft and seek legislation to make this happen, particularly in states where the law and courts are so restrictively cruel as to put adoptees in limbo or–at least as it relates to US citizenship and immigration—in danger. Some advocates are also researching this issue in more detail, to bolster legislative change. Adoptee Advocates of Michigan, an adoptee rights group in Michigan, has been methodically collecting information on each of Michigan’s 83 counties, specifically determining how hard it is to get a certified copy of your own adoption decree from the county court–as well as recording the responses they are getting from court clerks in charge of the records.
AAOM is close to finishing up its initial data collection and should have a report out in the next few months. But as Valerie Lemieux, who is coordinating the effort, says:
Apart from how hard it is in some Michigan counties to get such a basic document, the response from court clerks has at times been demoralizing and demeaning. They feel the need to constantly remind us how we have no rights to our own info—that even a simple adoption decree must be kept secret. Even the nice clerks say this to us, but in a more patronizing way—like you are a child for asking.
Stay tuned on this issue. We may also ask you for help in collecting additional data and stories.
It makes me so sad, yet another simple thing made into a hectic money market. It’s sad to hear the story of having to pay but asked other lady to do it … out come no problems. Why can’t things be simple?