Dossier: Documents, Notaries and Apostilles
Warning: This is a boring post about paperwork.
A dossier is, according to Webster’s, “a file containing detailed records on a particular person or subject”. The Dossier is the file you submit to the country you are adopting from that contains, among other things, the following:
- An official application to adopt
- A copy of your home study
- Medical evaluations of parents
- Birth certificates and marriage certificate
- Verification of employment
- FBI Background checks
- A psychological evaluation
- Reference letters from friends and family
- Photographs of your family, your home, and the room the child will be sleeping in
Assembling these documents is a process that takes time, and it can take a lot of patience. There’s a lot of “hurry up and wait” going on: you do everything you can, wait for a while, something comes up, you hurry to get that done, and then sit around and wait again. It can be frustrating, but it’s a necessary part of the process. A tedious part of the process was getting apostilles for all notarized and certified documents.
Most of us are familiar with the concept of a notary. There is a person, commissioned by their state/territory, who can verify true copies, can attest to oaths, or in the case we used, can verify signatures. However, because notarization varies significantly from state to state, never mind country to country, verifying documents between countries uses a convention called an apostille.
An apostille is a document attached to the front of the notarized or certified document, verifying its authenticity. It is issued by the state department of each state (turns out each state had their own), or by the federal state department for federally certified documents. So for 14 of our documents, they must be notarized, sent or taken to the secretary of state’s office, and verified.
The problem is that most of the time, getting a notary stamp on the document is sufficient for legal purposes. However, the Secretary of State’s office is VERY picky about the language surrounding the notary stamp, and we had to re-submit at least 5 documents because the notary’s verification was not properly done. Bit of advice: If you’re preparing a document that will be notarized, follow the examples on the state/territory’s Secretary of State’s website very carefully. Most of the notaries we worked with rarely have their work reviewed by the SecState, and don’t know/remember the proper formats.
We also had the joy of dealing with getting an apostille from a foreign country. I (Andre) was born in another country, which also uses the apostille convention. We requested a certified copy of my birth certificate with an apostille, and was told it would take about 6 months. Remarkably, it took 6 months and 8 days. As stated above, for a document to get an apostille, it must be either certified or notarized. The birth certificate I received was not certified, and there was no mention of an apostille. Also, it looked like the printer was running out of ink/toner, since some words were only partially printed. At least their time estimate was good!
Working with our adoption agency, we submitted some extra paperwork to explain that we had requested the correct thing, that we had received the wrong thing, and that it didn’t really matter because I was also submitting a copy of my U.S. naturalization certificate, which proves that I’m a U.S. citizen.
This short snapshot represents one of the many pitfalls you can run into during this process. Documents, more documents, and then some more are necessary to get this process done, and all we can do is prayerfully complete what we can, and trust that the reviewing authorities will show grace in their application of the rules.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” –Matthew 6:34
