Drawing Up Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates on the Basis of Foreign Documentsremarks referring to art. 73, Section 1 of the Law on Legal Status Acts (p.a.s.c.)

Abstract

The issue of drawing up birth, marriage and death certificates on the basis of foreign documents has not been the subject of a heated discussion in the legal literature, although it is a significant element of registering the legal status of a person that raises serious doubts among both law theoreticians and employees of birth, marriages and deaths register offices. Basically, the primary registration happens in the country on whose territory the event that results in drawing up a certificate took place; and in Poland a new act is drawn up for the same event by way of the so-called transcription. Certainly various circumstances, among them attempts to make sure that the information contained in the records is brought up to date, result in the situation, in which events that took place outside the Republic of Poland are registered in a limited extent. In this respect the Polish legislation does not stipulate obligatory registration. Drawing up certificates concerning the legal status of a person on the basis of foreign documents, especially by way of transcription of documents drawn up abroad, leads to divergences in the decisions made by heads of record offices. Drawing up a Polish birth, marriage of death certificate on the basis of foreign documents is stipulated in Art. 35, 70 and 73 of the Law on Legal Status Acts of 29 September 1986. Only in the regulation in Art. 70 of the p.a.s.c. do we deal with primary registration, whereas the regulation in Art. 35 and 73 of the p.a.s.c. is an example of secondary registration.

To be sure, questions will remain about the necessity of entering foreign documents in Polish records. The question whether the first, original legal status certificate is not sufficient in the conduct of legal transactions, remains in force. Is it necessary to draw up another certificate registering the same event? It seems that within the European Union it is possible to take common action in order to eliminate the institution of the registering of a record office certificate.