Paper trail and my birth certificate

[lizziec]

In trying to wind up mum's estate we have been stymied at many turns by a complete lack of paperwork. Apparently mum didn't like to keep paperwork of any type. I won't go in to too much detail here, because it makes me grumpy and you don't need to know about it.

For one of the things I need to prove I am mum's daughter, which apparently involves sending in my birth certificate, and this is where a huge problem I've been meaning to correct for a while comes in. At some point in my growing up my long form birth certificate vanished. No idea where it went. I don't remember ever having it. When I applied for student finance in 2002 I had to physically take my short form certificate in to the council so they could photocopy it.

The reason I had to take my short form birth certificate in person? Ah yes, that would be because my parents in their infinite wisdom, stuck my short form certificate in to my baby book. With glue.

Generally I've managed to avoid it being a problem for some years. I have other forms of ID. However, this set of paperwork that needs it has forced me to order one on a rush from the General Register Office, who I have to say are fantastic. I paid a premium for a next day service and they delivered. You can order certificates online, and if you can wait 16 days the price is a fairly reasonable £9.25 (to put in context, to get a death certificate copy from the registry office after registration is completed is £7 - if you get copies at the time of registration it's quite a lot less).

The GRO helpfully search one year either side of the year you name, just in case you're wrong about the exact year - which is what they had to do when I asked for a copy of daddy's death certificate (mum didn't keep that) because I had no idea when the death was actually registered (he died on Christmas day, so the registry office wouldn't have been open much between christmas day 1991 and january 1992).

I paid more than the £9.25 for my birth certificate because I needed it as a rush job, and they've delivered. Really the price serves me right for not just ordering one when I've thought about it countless other times over the years. But it's now here and I can finish that lot of paperwork and yay! And hopefully I'll never have to go through the embarrassment of sending my baby book anywhere to prove who I am in the future.

Comments

[barakta]

Good idea re birth cert - gotta love parents and their bright ideas.

[alisondh.livejournal.com]

The GRO are pretty good: I'm obsessive about keeping my own paperwork, but I wanted some copies of old certificates when I was doing some family history research and it was very easy to order stuff on line.

They usually tell you to get several copies of a death certificate at the time as some banks etc insist on seeing an original, but for some stupid reason they never seem to suggest getting more than one copy of a birth certificate ... which is pretty silly seeing as you're likely to need it umpteen times over the years ...

[b-liz.livejournal.com]

I only have one version of my birth certificate. I didn't know you could get long and short ones.

[alisondh.livejournal.com]

They charge you for the long one but give you the short one free (at the time of registration). It's a bit old hat now but at one time there was an important difference because the short version didn't (and still doesn't) show your parents' names or your dad's occupation, so if (in the days when it was an issue) you didn't want people to know whether or not your parents were married or what sort of social background you were from, you could just show the short version, LOL. Except that you need the long one for most legal things.

*Alison with historian's hat on :-).*

[kimble.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that they only issued the short form to people born after a certain date, so that those who were adopted didn't have a birth certificate that showed as much. I always assumed that was some time in the late 70s, but maybe I only had the short form because I was adopted, and that happened later.

[bethanthepurple.livejournal.com]

Well done on defeating stressy arg in the face.