Lack of Birth Certificate

[Guest SueJ]

I have a client with a participant that is ready to take her pension, but the participant does not have a birth certificate as she was born at home and one was never issued. I suggested a baptismal certificate or passport, but no luck there either.

Has anyone run across a similar situation?

[mbozek]

I am not familiar with the born at home exception. My understanding of state law is that all births are required to be reported by someone, e.g, midwife, doctor, parent. Was this person born in a foreign country?

[JanetM]

We have used school records and church records. One person sent for copy of the SSN application and we used that along with drivers license.

[Guest SueJ]

mbozek - she was born in Kentucky.

Janet - thanks. I'll suggest the copy of the SSN application.

[JanetM]

Our folks with this problem are from KY and WV. We also have had this come up with about 6 counties in KY and GA who suffered fires and records for 1920 to 1940 were destroyed. We do the best we can to document - must be creative.

[Mary Kay Foss]

My father was born at home and needed a birth certificate in order to get government security clearance. He didn't know until that point that his birth had not been registered.

The state (MN) had a procedure where a birth certificate was filled out, an explanation was attached as to why the birth wasn't registered and a knowledgeable person had to provide a notarized signature.

It took school records to find out what year he was born. His sister who was a year older didn't have a birth certificate either and they had argued for years as to which one was born in which year. Anyway they both got birth certificates when they were in there 40s. It might be a good idea for some of these participants because there are many things that require one other than just retirement plans.

You would think that the government would have given him clearance right away. Any self-respecting spy would certainly have a birth certificate!