The nightmare before Christmas - finding documents in Brazil

And we think we've got it bad???

Well let me tell you, you wouldn't want to put yourself in the shoes of any Brazilian who wants to try and locate important documents. Unlike almost every other nation on earth, Brazil DOES NOT have any central government agency (state or federal) that deals with vital statistics - Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Marriage Certificates, etc. These extremely important personal records are kept by this country's archaic system of (independent) Registries known as Cartórios. I say independent because with very few exceptions are not linked together in any way and do not communicate with one another at all.

Let's take a look at how this works then. A child is born in any major Brazilian city, so let's use São Paulo as an example. The birth of that child is registered with the Cartório do Registro Civil e Pessoas Naturais in the city, but there are numerous such Cartórios and the left hand doesn't know anything about what the right hand is doing. So the child's birth is registered in a book in one of them, that child gets a page and the rest of his/her life events are recorded there, if the child is a male. For females it's a bit different since in Brazilian law the marriage Certificate is superior to a Birth Certificate for females (throwback to the Stone Age where women were possessions, chattles, merchandise) so when a woman marries she gets a new page in the book and from that point on everything is recorded there. Legally she CANNOT use her Birth Certificate for anything following marriage.

So what does all this mean? Well there are quite literally thousands and thousands of Cartórios spread all over Brazil, each on housing the records of God only knows how many people, not sharing that information among themselves nor with any governmental body. So if that child that was born and registered in the São Paulo Cartório at some point in the future needs his/her Birth Certificate then unless they know EXACTLY which Cartório, they're simply out of luck in most cases. Finding essential documents in this country is a nightmare of colossal proportions. I know this from experience.

Here's where this story begins.......

Several months ago I was approached by a woman in the USA who was acting as an advocate for an elderly Brazilian woman, hereafter identified as Sra. V, who has been living in the USA for many, many years, was married to an American citizen, but never obtained her "green card". Well, the guy abandoned her and now Sra. V is in a struggle to round up all the necessary documents in order to satisfy USCIS and avoid deportation, after everything else this poor old soul has already gone through. The advocate wanted to know how to go about finding the woman's Birth Certificate. I explained the system and suggested that the only way to find the document would to be have somebody locally armed with every possible scrap of information about the birth try and locate it, and stated that even then it might not be found. I volunteered to help in any way that I could, offered absolutely no guarantees and from that point the QUEST was on.

Well some time later the advocate got back to me with the few scraps of information that she was able to pry out of this dear old soul and one of those led me to a major city in Bahia state. Well that city has NO LESS than 16 Cartórios. YIKES!!! Fortunately for me the great majority of them had e-mail addresses that were readilly available through a Google search. I composed an e-mail with all the information available to me and sent is out as a single mailout to all of the Cartórios, not expecting any results. Little-by-little responses came trickling in, "Nope not here!" Then one day I got a response from one Cartório that finally gave me hope, the gentleman advised me that there was a record that kind of matched the information I had given at another Cartório and he provided me even more information still. Well fortunately Bahia is one of the states where the Cartórios do communicate between themselves and records are now being computerized and centralized. So armed with further information I contacted the specific Cartório and lo and behold was able to track down the Birth Certificate that has for so long been searched for by so many people.

Well as it turned out, one needs a CPF number (you don't exist if you don't have a CPF) in order to request the issuance of a replacement Birth Certificate, so I volunteered for that task and the fees and postage that went along with it too, Happily this nightmare has come to an end. I have an early Christmas present for Sra. V, I have in hand her Birth Certificate, I've translated it into English and made up an Affidavit attesting to the accuracy of my translation and it will be off to her in the mail Monday or Tuesday. Sometimes Christmas does come early!!!

Feliz Natal Sra. V, com muito carinho,
James, Expat-blog Experts Team