The Adoption Decree or Order of Adoption (your adoption might have come with one or both), is generally the final order of adoption. The Adoption Decree can contain some potentially upsetting and draconian language for adoptees adopted several decades ago, or even more recently. Often, the decree announces that you, the adoptee, have been 'abandoned' or 'rejected' by your natural mother. You, the adoptee, might be referred to as illegitimate or in other derogatory terms, until the end of the document when you are judged to have, by virtue of your adoption, obtained "all rights, privileges and immunities of children born in lawful wedlock." take all of this in stride, if you can, and write it off to sheer ignorance. Adoption Decrees usually include your birthname, your adoptive parents names, your adoptive name, and sometimes one or both of your birthparents names.

The best place to find the adoption decree is with your adoptive parents, with their important papers. Barring that, you can contact the attorney that handled the adoption, or his firm if he is no longer practicing or has passed on, and try to obtain a copy. I optained the copy of my adoption decree through the attorney that handled my adoption for my adoptive parents. It contained my birthname, and within two days I had found my birthmother, after several years of searching. My problem was with locating the attorney, as my adoptive parents did not have a family attorney that they used regularly, and so did not remember who they had retained. If you are in a similar situation, if there was an agency involved, they sometimes have the name of the attorney and will give it to you as part of the non-ID(if you ask), as will the court to whom you petition for non-ID or to have your file opened. If you contact the attorney and s/he will not give you a copy of your adoption decree, it is often worth it to have your adoptive parents request it, as well as all other documents related to your adoption, in order to help in the preparation of their wills, for instance. If you obtain a copy of your adoption decree or order of adoption through the court, agency, or even through an attorney, sometimes identifying names will be 'whited' out or otherwise deleted, however you can often still tell how many characters in length a name is, or find other clues. Similarly, when requesting the adoption decree, it can be useful to also attempt to obtain the consent to relinquish, termination order, or other consent that your birthparent(s) will have signed.

7) Waiver of Confidentiality

You should contact the agency, court, adoption services department, or other agencies or bureaus that were involved in your adoption or house records relating to your adoption, and ask about filing a waiver of confidentiality. In some states, provinces and regions,if you file a waiver of confidentiality, then if and when a member of your birthfamily contacts that agency or court seeking information about you, identifying information will be released to them so that they may contact you directly. Do not file these waivers or ask about them until after you have received all of the information you plan to request from that particular agency, so as not to tip off Vital Statistics, for instance, that you are adopted if you're trying to get an original birth certificate, or so as not to seem as if you are planning on using any information obtained in order to search.

8) Baptismal certificates and other religious records

If in the course of your inquiries, you are able to determine if you were baptised shortly after birth, or if you were placed by a private agency with a religious bent, particularly a Catholic agency, you might be able to obtain a baptismal certificate that could contain information about your birthname and birthfamily. Churches in general keep excellent records and if there's any indication that your birthparents were active in a church or specific organized religion, it pays to look into it further.

9) Hospital Records of Birth

The records of your birth can be a goldmine of information and in some cases can be relatively easy to get, as in many hospitals, after a certain period of time the records are moved to an archiving company and stored in warehouses staffed by people who know little about adoption and have had little contact with medical requests. The place to start, however, is with the hospital itself. If you do not have your birthname, you have a few options. You can request the records under your adoptive name and that of your adoptive parent(s), hoping that, especially in the case of a private adoption, they might be listed as responsible parties and therefore the records will be crossreferenced and the clerk will just send them all to you,(do not mention adoption) or you can engage in a number of deceptive practices such as attempting to come up with a story as to why you don't have your birthname,(that doesn't involve adoption) or why you want to see the records of all the babies born on a given day. I am not recommending any of these methods nor vouching for their legality in your particular region under your particular circumstances, and if you are concerned about the legality of any of them, you should consult an attorney. In addition to the records of your birth, most Obstetrics units keep an 'OB' log that lists the babies born each day that could be of use. How long both the log and your particular birth records are kept varies from hospital to hospital but most hospitals do have the records in some form, kept somewhere, it may just take some persistence on your part. Do not mention that you were adopted. You will not receive your records even though it is not illegal for you to request them, nor in most places is it illegal for them to be provided to you. In fact, one can make a pretty good argument that you are entitled to them, but that is another matter. One thing to keep in mind is something that happened to me. I attempted to obtain my hospital records without my birthname, thus tipping off the hospital that I was adopted. My files were promptly flagged, and once I had a name and attempted to get my records again, I was unable to. Lesli Larocco(lll6@cornell.edu), however, had a differrent experience with an archiving company:

"At this point, I had a name, an age, a place of birth, and my hospital of birth. I wrote to the hospital again, and learned that they wanted by birth certificate before they would send me the documents. I ignored them.I waited nearly a year before writing the hospital again; this time, the records had been moved to an archiving company in Marietta, GA, and that company sent me my records. "

In most cases, your birth records will not indicate by any special flag that you are adopted, and so if you do have your birthname, you can usually obtain them without trouble if the hospital has not destroyed them. On the other hand, usually one of the attractions of obtaining the records is for a name, so it's a classic double-edged sword, and you should use your best judgement.

Continue to section four of Adoption Documents

This post was authored by Shea Grimm except where otherwise indicated. It may be copied and distributed freely, in whole or part, as long as it is not sold, and as long as this notice is kept intact.