[Tsmom]

I just wanted people who are just starting out to know that all of the documents in your dossier cannot be more than 9 months old when they are sent to be registered with the CCAA. I had birth and marriage certs that where a year old that I was planning on using. Now I have to order all new. My marriage cert took 5 weeks last time. (I called they won't do an urgent order) So now I am behind in my timeline.

[terryb]

perhaps this is a dumb question, but how can your birth certificate or marriage certificate expire? Medical tests or financial statments I can understand...am I missing something?

[KarenInCa]

Hi Terry,
The state in which the certificates are kept, has a state seal on the cert when they send it to you. The original marriage and birth certs kept on file with the county clerk obviously does not expire, but the one they send you is dated with the date they stamped it with the state seal. That date that it was stamped is only valid for 1 year.
I suppose technically they are assuming that things can change within one years time.

[joyfulme3x]

Yes, it doesn't make much sense to me that birth certificates/marriage certificates expire! But for some reason that is the way it is. It's not actually the certificate itself that expires but the signature/seal, if that explains anything. We have also had a notary laugh at us because of the rule that the notarial commission has to still be valid at DTC! We had to use another notary because that particular notary's commission was expiring in just a couple of months. She seemed a little insulted!

As for the 9 months rule that Tsmom posted, I finally understand that thanks to our case manager walking me through it. Apparently this is an agency requirement more than a CCAA requirement but it's for our own good. When your dossier is in the reviewing room in China the reviewers will reject any documents that are over 12 months old, and you will have to re-do them--that would be a big problem. So the agencies want to be sure you have a good big window of time (3 months) between when you DTC and when your documents hit 12 months, so that you won't risk expiration if for some reason there are delays in China. Finally something makes sense to me!

What REALLY boggles my mind, though, is the confusion of how old documents can be for authentication at the various Chinese consulates. The LA Consulate required that our birth/marriage certificates be no more than 6 MONTHS old for authentication! I had ordered those last fall so had to re-order newer ones recently to allow for the 6-month rule!

It is all quite a production but I'm sure will be worth everything in the end.

[davenoel]

As long as you are all being annoyed by these silly age of documents requirements....here is one to really annoy you. Your INS form H171 is good for 18 months but the fingerprint document INSIDE this 171 form is now only good for 15 months! Some brilliant governement official must have decided that 18 months was too long for fingerprints to be valid:-)))

[AmyDenise]

Thank you so much for the warning about the certificates expiring! I just looked at the birth and marriage certificates I ordered last year, and sure enough, they were dated March 4, 2004. I ordered new ones this morning. Reading these forums sure is helpful. Thanks to everyone who shares their knowledge!

Amy

[Sean&Shan]

Be careful about your notaries as well. Our police used a notary that expires at the end of the month, after we would be DTC but perhaps before we have been logged in so our agency made us get anotherone, and I must say the police were none too kind about it (even though we had given them notary specifications before hand). I'm so mad at myself because I've been sitting here with the letter for a month and a half waiting for our 171 and could have already had it replaced if I had caught the mistake, now we too are off schedule and won't have a LID until April.

[suse151]

Yea - the document dating is confusing and can certainly delay things is you don't catch it. We too had to reorder birth certificates and rush my meds to make sure they were in Houston by beginning of March (Houston consulate also has the 6 mth rule on police clearance letters, medicals). We couldn't use our police clearance letters from our h.s. either b/c we did that in the Fall. Hopefully things stay par for the course in China - I have a medical rpt that will expire in September. I s/b DTC by April 1.

Good luck everyone - just check and re-check!

susan

[Tsmom]

bumping up