Getting a baby is always a wonderful joyful moment, and it’s very important not to overshadow it with any legal problems. Moreover, in many countries the registration of a newborn is a rather complicated bureaucratic procedure.
Nowadays it’s very common that parents give birth to a child outside of the country they both are citizens of.
The motives of future parents can vary. Some of them are looking for the best clinics, the others want their child to have an opportunity to choose their citizenship in the future (as dozens of states provide a citizenship by “right of soil”). Finally, it often happens to be that parents work or vacation abroad at the time of the childbirth.
So what should you start with?
First of all, future parents need to study the law of the country where the birth of their child will take place, and also to prepare a package of legalised documents from the country they are citizens of. Foreign passports don’t need to be legalised, but a marriage certificate (or a divorce certificate) for example must be legalised and have an apostille stamp. Some countries are not acceded to The Hague Apostille Convention, for example the UEA, China or Canada. So in case if the birth of a child takes place in one of such countries, all the document must be legalised through the consular legalisation procedure.
Besides, if a mother-to-be has some kind of important medical documentation it’s always worth to legalise it as well. We should take into account that many countries (including Russia) do not apostille originals of medical documents at all, except for the documents issued by the Ministry of Health. However, the way-around is to put an apostille on notarized copies or a notarized translation of the relevant medical certificates and extracts.
It is also very important to make sure that all the conditions of legal stay of a future mother-to-be on the territory of a foreign state are met. After checking all of the above, future parents can go to a clinic and forget about the bureaucracy for a while.
After a baby is born and a mother is ready to leave the clinic, all legal formalities become very important. First of all, parents should retrieve the documents on the birth of their child from the clinic itself (what documents it would be depends on the country) and get them legalised as soon as possible (through the procedure of apostille or consular legalisation depending on the country).
Then there are usually two options:
The first option is to go to a local analogue of a Russian civil registry office (most often, this is one of the departments of a City Hall) and get a child's birth certificate there. It must then immediately be apostilled (or legalised through the consular legalisation procedure) and then translated by a sworn translator, who is certified by the consulate of the relevant country. After that parents should contact the consulate itself for further legalisation of this translation and registration of the child’s citizenship.
The second option is to go directly to the consulate of the state parents are citizens of to get a birth certificate. They should take with them all the documents received at the clinic earlier, the documents should be already legalised and translated.
Also we should always bear in mind that many countries have their own formalities connected to the registration of birth documentation. For example, in the UK, a birth certificate must be certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Germany, all documents from the clinic will be taken without return in order to issue a birth certificate. You should take all of this into account to be prepared in advance – for example to get the notarized copies of the documents you might need in the future and so on.
The birth of a child is a wonderful moment that can make you forget about everything in the world. But in everything what concerns the legal side of this joyful event, it is really necessary to keep cold mind. There are no trifles if it comes to registering a birth and citizenship of a child.
