XV. The Law, Page 2

Travelling with Your New Child

You can travel overseas with your child before the adoption becomes final. The child needs a passport in his current legal name, not yours. And in order to prevent problems at immigration points, you will need an official letter from the agency explaining your relationship and granting you permission to travel. This is to protect children from paedophiles or kidnap by non-custodial parents. The passport application has to be signed by someone with parental responsibility, usually a representative of the agency. The procedure is the same as for foster children, so agencies are quite used to this. After the adoption order the passport can be amended to have the name changed (it costs £17.00). You should be eligible for family fares, but you may need to press your case with the tour operators.

Visas will need the same authorisation from the agency. On balance, I would say that except for travel within the EU or elsewhere where you don’t need visas, or in case of real necessity, I would postpone foreign travel until after the adoption is final. The hassle with visas is too much. Take your holidays closer to home.

Adoption and Birth Certificates

After the adoption order is made, your child will be issued with a new birth certificate and with an adoption certificate. These are very important papers and should be kept carefully. The new birth certificate is in the short form, and names you as the parents, with no mention of the fact that the child is adopted. There is no long birth certificate for adopted people in their new name. From 1 January 2000 the short certificate is also A4 in size, instead of the previous smaller size.

The adoption certificate is more like a long birth certificate and makes it clear that the child is adopted, giving the court and date of the adoption. The adoption certificate plus the short birth certificate can be used together in those few cases where people normally are expected to produce a long birth certificate. When the court officials discuss this with you, be sure to ask for one or two extra copies of each; they will probably come in handy some day. Extra copies of the certificates have to be paid for, but it’s worth it.

The original birth certificate in the child’s original name may have crossed your path during the preliminaries to placement or the application to the court. You should have kept a copy of it if possible or at least noted down the information it contained. But in any case your child is entitled to an official copy when she turns 18 (unless the Registrar General has reason to believe that releasing it would cause a public danger, for example, if the adoptee had threatened to murder her birth mother, which has happened). An additional provision is that if an adoptee intends to marry before the age of 18, she is entitled to have the Registrar General inform her whether her intended spouse is closely related to her. People adopted before 13 November 1975 must receive counselling before getting their birth details; people adopted on or after that date have a right to counselling if they wish, but are not required to have it.

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