Could You Be Adopted and Not Know It?

No, it’s not possible, right?! You have your birth certificate and it clearly states who you were born to and where. If you were adopted, your birth certificate would list people other than the parents you were raised by or else it would state you were adopted on there somewhere, right?! What if I told you that is not the case?

In the United States, birth certificates are issued by individual states to document vital statistics and are used to prove identity, age, and citizenship. The facts of birth such as parents, name given, sex, date and time of birth, location of birth, parent’s residence, parent’s occupation, and number of siblings are recorded then it is certified by the physician and submitted to the state. Certified copies are issued to you upon your request at anytime, typically from your local health department, courthouse, or vital statistics office.

But if you are adopted, that all changes! At the time that your adoption is finalized, your original, factual birth certificate is sealed away and substituted with a new birth certificate. On this new birth certificate, the facts of birth are replaced with the facts of adoption. This post-adoption birth certificate will state that you were born to your adopted parents, possibly in a different city or even in a different state. However, no where on the certificate will it state that it is amended, or that these are not the facts of birth, or that you are adopted.

If your parents decide to keep your adoption a secret from you, the birth certificate will not spill the beans. Instead it will quietly deceive you into believing that it is a truthful document. Sadly, we still have people who have never been told that they were adopted and it is heartbreaking to see them finding out from a consumer DNA test, the slip of the tongue from Aunt Sally, or while cleaning out the home of their deceased (adoptive) parent.

Is there anything on the certificate below that would alert you that it is amended or that the person is adopted?

This is my birth certificate. I was adopted. Thankfully my parents did not keep that a secret from me, but that doesn’t change the fact that what is printed on my birth certificate is NOT facts. That was not my name. I was not born to the parents listed. I was not born in that county. I was not even born in that state! (Note: All redactions shown were made by me and are not part of the actual certificate.)

The copy shown above is of the copy issued at the time of birth, however through the years, the paper that the copies are on has changed. In recent years, the copies look like this… (same original, just copied on different security paper.)

Take a moment to compare to my true and factual original birth certificate. What differences do you see?

Some states also issue short form birth certificates. These are certified certificates with the basic information typed onto the security paper instead of an actual copy of the original birth certificate (also referred to as the long form.) Here is the short form of my true birth certificate:

What does your birth certificate look like? How do you know if it is true and factual? Are you questioning if maybe you were adopted? In the words of Ricky Ricardo… Your parents might just have some ‘splainin’ to do!