Quinn Signs Adoption Records Law

By Soyoung Kwak in News on May 23, 2010 4:15PM

While Mayor Daley has been on a crusade to bring security and safety to Chicago, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has been keeping busy by taking a different path: the Governor on Friday finally signed into law a billl which allows adults who were adopted as children to have easier access to their birth certificates. The main aspects of the new law is, as outlined by the Sun-Times:

• People seeking birth certificates of adoptions that took place before 1946 can access their information immediately.
• For those seeking birth certificates after 1946, state officials will spend the next 1.5 years "notifying birth parents and adoptive children that they need to contact the state and declare whether or not they wish to be found ... After Nov. 15, 2011, people involved in adoption can request birth certificates, and if the other parties involved have filed no objections, the birth certificates will be turned over.
• If a birth parent refuses to disclose or turn over their information, the adopted child can ask for their birth certificate again after five years, in which state officials will contact birth parents and see if they have changed their minds.

This development isn't entirely random. Illinois seemed to have drawn its new law from similar laws passed in Maine and New Hampshire, which aim to "balance the rights of adoptive children and parents." Although some may interpret this law as a free-for-all, it does not leave every birth certificate open for former child adoptees to claim whenever, wherever. Before this new law was signed, former child adoptees could only obtain their birth certificates with a court order.