That raised embossed seal
Reader Michael Stills was a bit perplexed.
He knew, as a genealogist, that many of the records he had copies of were embossed with a raised official seal.
That didn’t explain, of course, why his marriage license was stamped with an Official Birth Record seal.
And it particularly didn’t explain or provide an answer to the key question that he had: what exactly is the significance and value of “Certified” vital documents?
His understanding, he said, was “not … that the information contained in the document is correct, only that is a copy of the original document.”
Could that be correct?
Easy answer: Yep.
That’s exactly it.
And that’s all it is.
Pure and simple, a certified copy is “a copy of a document, signed and certified as a true copy by the officer to whose custody the original is intrusted.”1
Stated just a little differently, it’s “a copy of a document issued by a court or government agency guaranteed to be a true and exact copy of the original.”2
Or: “A certified copy is a copy (often a photocopy) of a primary document that has on it an endorsement or certificate that it is a true copy of the primary document.”3
Notice the one thing you don’t see in any of these explanations or definitions of a certified document: in no case are the contents of the document being certified as true or accurate.
We can all point to examples, as genealogists, of certified records with information that is absolutely, positively, provably wrong.
A case in point would be a death certificate in The Legal Genealogist‘s possession. It’s certified by the then-Director of Vital Records of the State of Utah. And the middle name, city of birth, maiden name of mother and first name of father of the deceased are all incontrovertibly and demonstrably in error.4 I know they’re wrong: it’s my father’s death certificate, and I have his original birth certificate, baptismal certificate, parents’ marriage certificate and more, with the correct information.5
So the fact that a document is certified doesn’t mean what it says it correct.
It doesn’t even mean the original was the real thing: it’s entirely possible that what was originally filed was a total fraud. For example, more than one land deed over the years has been recorded when the signatures on it had been forged and the actual owners had no idea someone else was claiming to have bought the land.
Now… as for Michael’s marriage certificate… no, the fact that the “this is an official copy” stamp says it’s a birth record rather than a marriage record doesn’t mean he isn’t married. He is (or isn’t) married based on what actually happened when he was married, not based on what’s in that certified copy of his record. Because the certification of the copy doesn’t affect the legality of the underlying event at all. If one of the two people who got married was already legally married to someone else, you can have a properly certified copy of a record of a marriage that was never legal, for example.
So with all these limits, why do we have certified copies at all? Because it’s “a convenient way of providing a copy of documents. … It avoids the owner of important documents (especially identity documents) giving up possession of those documents which might mean a risk of their loss or damage.”6
Bottom line then: “A certified record is a copy of an original record verified to be a genuine copy and may be used as the original. … A certified copy does not ensure the original is genuine, only that it is a true copy of the primary document.”7
SOURCES
- Henry Campbell Black, A Dictionary of Law (St. Paul, Minn. : West, 1891), 187, “certified copy.” ↩
- Wex, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School (http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex : accessed 8 Jan 2018), “certified copy.” ↩
- Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “Certified copy,” rev. 3 Dec 2017. ↩
- Utah Department of Health, Death Certificate 143-94-000152, Hugo H. Geissler (1994); Office of Vital Records and Statistics, Salt Lake City. ↩
- And no, Utah won’t fix the death certificate. The rule there requires that the application to amend the certificate be filed by the informant. That wasn’t me. ↩
- Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.com), “Certified copy,” rev. 3 Dec 2017. ↩
- Rebekkah Shaw, “Notarized vs. Certified Records,” Records Keepers of the Utah State Archives blog, posted 18 May 2016 (https://recordskeepers.blog/ : accessed 8 Jan 2017). ↩
And… just because it’s certified doesn’t mean that the clerk copied everything correctly. I have a marriage certificate that says my great-grandparents were married in 1867. The town record that the town clerk copied from clearly says 1867 at the top of the page, but clearly 1868 for the record of interest. It’s in several of my Mayflower lines.
Too true, I’m afraid. I have a death certificate where the typed word “December” is even spelled wrong… 🙂
I thought certified copies were created so the owners could make more money because it always costs more for a certified copy!
That’s not the only reason… 🙂
When I got a certified copy of my birth certificate, I recognized my father’s distinctive handwriting. He must have been excited or tired when he filled the form. He wrote that my parents lived on Frederal St instead of Federal St. Easy explanation: he was accustomed to signing his name by including his middle name, Frederick. He also misspelled my middle name. He wrote Douglass instead of Douglas. It took me some time to reason why. My parents were high school sweethearts. They remained together while he went to engineering school and she went to nursing school. After graduating from Boston University, my father joined the Navy and went off to war. Instead of being named after a war hero as my parents intended, I was named for the cobblestone street where my mother grew up and lived until after the war – Douglass Street! Worse, instead of writing the town where he was born, he wrote the name of the town where he grew up. And that is causing me all kinds of problems because he doesn’t seem to have a birth certificate.
I have birth certificates for many of my mother’s siblings, filled out by the same doctor, and their father (my grandfather) was apparently born in at least two different Texas towns! 🙂
This is great, thanks. It’s a debate that many adoptee rights activists and others have been having a lot recently, particularly when states are releasing a “non-certified” copies of original birth records. That doesn’t make sense to many of us, as it is basically saying “we aren’t vouching about the accuracy of this record.” Registrars and others are confusing certification with identification and security, which I get in this day and age of uber-security, but it doesn’t make sense within the system of certifying the accuracy of vital records.
The issue is that the certified record may be accepted as proof of legal identity, and an OBC is generally not proof of legal identity (because the adoption has altered that).
It can’t be recognized if the document also has in pretty bold letters “Not for Identification Purposes.” Oregon does this for OBCs.
In which case there’s no purpose to be served in getting a certified copy. I use informational or genealogical copies all the time for research purposes without getting them certified. Among other things, they’re a ton cheaper than getting a certified copy. It’s only when the certificate itself is going to be used as proof of the original that certification is even an issue, and if there’s nothing to be proved (in court or for identification purposes), then who cares if it’s certified or not? This is, I’m afraid, really a tempest in a teapot. The issue, for the adoptee, is access to the document, not whether or not it’s certified. Get the record first, the rest is window-dressing.
I have my OBC from Michigan (by court order). It is certified as a true copy with a raised seal AND states that it is “not the active record of the event” and has been sealed. Personally, I do feel that the fact that it’s certified is psychologically and emotionally significant.
I can’t speak to the emotional issue, since I’m not an adoptee. As a purely legal matter, it’s the access that’s critical, not whether there’s a seal on it or not.
http://greengenesgenealogyservices.blogspot.com/2017/10/certified-is-not-all-its-cracked-up-to.html
Everything with a grain of salt, even the certified documents.
And sometimes with a whole salt lick! Great examples in your blog.
My first son was born on July 14th. When we received his birth certificate, it said July 4th. Well, he was a firecracker, but we had it changed to the correct date. Why? You can never tell when one of those things might pop up that says (on or before July 4th), so at some point in his life, it might make a big difference!
That could be an issue for sure!
Thanks Judy! My wife has decided that, after 25 years of marriage, she is going to keep me regardless of the certification. 😉
Glad to hear it, Michael. (I suspect she’s stuck with you legally anyway… 🙂 )