Vital records consist of birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates. State government vital records offices issue these documents. To get a copy of a vital record, contact the vital records office in the state where the event occurred. Replacing all important documents that were lost or destroyed in a flood, fire, or other disaster can be overwhelming. Although the process varies from state to state, these general steps can help you get started.
If you lost your home, contact your local post office.
Ask if you can pick up your mail there or request to have your mail forwarded to a temporary location. Find the vital records office in the state where you were born. Check to see if you can get a certified copy of your birth certificate with no identification.
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If you can, follow the ordering instructions. Some states accept alternate ways to verify your ID. You may have to contact your state to find out what it requires. For example:. Another state may accept a notarized letter from your mother or father whose name is on your birth certificate, along with a copy of their photo ID. If you do need your own government-issued photo ID to get a copy of your birth certificate, start with step 3. Check with your state for its procedures. In some states, you can order a replacement online without providing any ID.
If you are a lawful permanent resident of the U. If you are a naturalized U. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Contact the vital records office in the state where you were married. First, find out if you need a replacement card. If you do need a card, follow the steps to replace your Social Security card. Report a lost or destroyed passport to the State Department immediately. Fill out a form DS to apply for a new passport. Bring a certified copy of your birth certificate or naturalization papers and a government-issued photo ID.
Replace your voter registration card through your state or local election office. It proves your identity and age. You'll need it to:. Contact the vital records office in the state where you were born to get a copy of your birth certificate. Follow the instructions for requesting copies and paying fees. If you need a copy fast, ask about expedited service or shipping when you place your order. If they did, they would have received a Consular Report of Birth Abroad.
Department of State. Depending on the country, a vital records office in the nation may also list the birth. In that case, you may have to contact the hospital where you were born. A child born in a foreign country and adopted by a U. The country in which you were born will have issued it.
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To get a copy, contact the nearest foreign embassy or consulate for that country. If you need an authenticated copy and it's not in English, ask the embassy for help to get it translated. If you were adopted from another country by a U. The goal is to improve both the timeliness and quality, but especially the timeliness, of data products.
The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of these efforts so that users of U. The paper also discusses the organization of the NVSS and summarizes current data developments and publications. In the United States, legal authority for the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, fetal deaths, and induced terminations of pregnancy abortions resides individually with the states as well as with cities, in the case of New York City and Washington, D.
In effect, the states are the full legal proprietors of the vital statistics records and the information contained therein, and are responsible for maintaining registries according to state law, and issuing copies of birth, marriage, divorce, and death certificates. As a result of this state authority, the collection of registration-based vital statistics at the national level has always depended on a cooperative relationship between the states and the federal government.
APHSIS is a professional organization whose members include primarily, but not exclusively, the vital statistics executives and other employees of state registration offices.
In addition to providing the states with a common point of contact with the federal government and numerous other professional organizations, APHSIS also facilitates interstate exchanges of ideas, methods, and technology for the registration of vital events and the dissemination of vital and other public health statistics.
The registration of births, marriages, and deaths has a long history in the United States, beginning with a registration law enacted by Virginia in and a modification of this law enacted by Massachusetts in National Vital Statistics Division Later, when the U. Constitution was framed, provision was made for a decennial census but not a national vital registration system; this latter function remained with the states.
To obtain national data, the decennial censuses in the latter half of the nineteenth century included questions about vital events, but the method was recognized as inefficient and the results as deficient. Accordingly, in , when the U. Bureau of the Census was made a permanent agency of the federal government, the legislation authorized the Director of the Bureau to obtain, annually, copies of records filed in the vital statistics offices of those states and cities having adequate death registration systems and to publish data from these records.
A few years earlier, the Bureau had issued a recommended death reporting form the first "U. Standard Certificate of Death" and requested that each independent registration area adopt it as of January 1, In , the national birth-registration area was established, and by all states were registering live births and deaths with acceptable event coverage and providing the required data to the bureau for the production of national birth and death statistics.
In , responsibility for collecting and publishing vital statistics at the federal level was transferred to the U.
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Department of Health and Human Services. The continuing improvement of the NVSS depends on extensive cooperation between federal and state governments in a variety of developmental activities. The NCHS often plays a coordinating role in these activities by bringing together representatives of the states and other public and private organizations to focus on specific topics. The following sections present some recent activities, together with related publications and data products. The NCHS facilitated the process of revising the Model Act and Regulations by convening the Revision Working Group and bringing in various experts that have an interest in the registration system.
This is the fifth edition of the Model Act the first was produced in and the third edition of the Model Regulations the first was in The Model Act and Regulations provide a legal guide to states that are considering refining their laws. The report on the revision provides a useful reference on terminology, recommended registration practices, disclosure and issuance procedures, and other functional aspects of a state registration system. The latest revision of the Model Act and Regulations contains provisions that allow states that implement the relevant sections of the model to easily incorporate technological advances in records and information management.
A second important area of cooperation with the state vital statistics offices is the revision, generally every ten years, of the U. Standard Certificates and Reports. This is a particularly important activity because it brings together various experts--data users, researchers, and policy makers, both public and private--to develop recommendations on the content of the certificates and reports that will be used in the registration of live births, deaths, marriages, divorces, fetal deaths, and induced terminations of pregnancy during the next decade.
Although the states do not all adopt the U. Standard Certificates and Reports exactly as they are promulgated, the documents are generally employed with only minor changes and thereby succeed in promoting a high degree of uniformity and comparability among the states.
Replace Your Vital Records
In addition, VSCP contracts between the NCHS and the states require collection of certain basic data items from the various certificates and reports; the items for births and deaths are listed in the notes to this paper. Standard Certificates and Reports was implemented in A published report describes the procedures followed in developing the revisions and the principal additions, modifications, and deletions of items Tolson et al.
This report also provides a history of the content of all certificates and reports since Changes introduced in the revisions are reflected in statistical reports published by the NCHS for and later data years see, for example, Ventura et al. Common to the revised certificates of live birth and death and the reports of fetal death and induced termination of pregnancy was the addition of an item identifying Hispanic origin.
For data, the NCHS obtained from all states and the District of Columbia information on Hispanic origin of the decedent on certificates of death and of the mother and father on the certificates of live birth. All but a few states obtain this information on reports of fetal death.