Here Barb tells us what to do in order to register birth certificates of minors born abroad.

Registering the births of minors (osób małoletnich):

Birth certificates of minors, born abroad, are registered on the basis of a written application, submitted by one of the parents to the Office of Vital Statistic (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego), along with the original birth certificate and its certified translation. Sounds simple right?

What they fail to tell you is that the express consent of both parents (regardless of marital status) is required (or may be required). The consent of the absent parent must be appropriately notarized. I was unable to register my children’s births and my marriage, because I didn’t have my husband’s notarized consent. This “requirement” is rather arbitrarily enforced at the whim of “pani urzędniczka”. I was rather upset that this small VITAL detail was not explicitly described on the consulate’s website.

I spent many hours on Polish forums looking for other cases of “foreign” parents being refused for this reason during a direct application submission. I found about 5 cases out of the 100 I read through. Boy, do I feel special! I encountered countless cases of exceptions where the process described above was not followed. Rules in Poland are not consistently followed which makes the whole experience of dealing with Poland’s bureaucracy extremely frustrating.

More important information concerning minors:

The USC reserves the right to require additional, unspecified information at any time during the process. Scary huh? The USC may require additional documents e.g. marriage certificate (akt ślubu), copies of BOTH parents’ birth certificates if the original marriage certificate does not contain sufficient information.

In the case of Canadian documentation, the bride and grooms’ parents are named and their country of origin is listed. This fact therefore makes it highly unlikely that supplemental information will be requested. All these supplemental documents need to be properly translated/certified as well. Are we having fun yet?

A copy of the application form (wniosek) to register a foreign birth or marriage certificate, can be obtained from any consulate office or downloaded from most consulate websites.

Good luck.