Birth certificates

There are three things that need to be set up for kids born abroad and moving to Poland. The first thing is to assign them a registered address (zameldowanie). The second is to get the PESEL numbers for them which  are similar to the social security number in the US. Finally, they need Polish birth certificates.

Zameldowanie

Zameldowanie is needed for birth certificates or perhaps the PESEL numbers, which are assigned when the cerificates are issued. The crucial dependency here is the signature of the owner of the place whose address you assign to the person. This means that you either own some apartment or a house or someone else agrees to sign the documents. As being registered at an address gives certain rights to the registered person it is not possible to get such signature from a landlord if you rent an apartment. In my case my parents agreed to register me and my kids in their house. My wife is registered at the place where her mom lives. Normally also PESEL is needed to fill the application for zameldowanie, but after some meditation over the nature of circular dependencies in Polish regulations the clerk decided that PESEL is not necessary. The documents to prepare are:

1. National ID card of the parent. I had just received it at the same office.
2. The child’s birth certificate or passport. As I was told this is to prove that I am not trying to register a non-existent person. Or something like that.
3. The application with the signature of the owner of the place where you want the child to be registered.
4. Some document confirming the ownership. Since there is no one document like the car tittle in the US it is best to take a couple of documents in hope that the clerk will like one of them. My father had to drive back home to get the document that the clerk said would satisfy her.

Birth certificates and PESEL

After having the kids registered as living at my parents house I went to a different section of the (equivalent of) the Town Hall to apply for their Polish birth certificates. There was a special office for getting birth certificates for Polish kids born abroad, apparently this has became quite common. The clerk there dictated what I should write on the form. The cost was about 80 zł per certificate ($30). The documents she sked for were:

1. My ID card. This is needed practically for everything and not always can be substituted by passport.
2. American birth certificates with sworn translations to Polish. I had to leave both the originals and translations for the archive.
3. I don’t remember if the clerk asked for certificates of zameldowanie, but for sure the registered address needed to be written on the application form.

It takes about a week for the birth certificates to be issued. They can be picked by any person from immediate family, if the authorization for that person is written on the application form. In my case my father will take care of that. The PESEL number is assigned when the certificate is issued. Once my kids have their PESELs  I can start the process of getting the health  insurance for them.

assign them a registered address (zameldowanie

Tags: beaurocracy