Yes, I procrastinated a bit (well a lot, after all I started this in March, 2010), and as of December, 2010, I still needed the following:
- Grandfather’s certified and apostilled death certificate
- Parents’ certified long form of marriage certificate, apostilled
- My own certified birth certificate, apostilled
- Finally, translation of grandparents’ marriage certificate, father’s birth certificate, parents’ marriage certificate, grandfather’s death certificate, my birth certificate
The way I figure:
- My appointment can’t even be set up until January
- If they had already booked the entire 2010 by March, the appointment would probably be months after I set up the appointment
- All the paperwork I still needed to obtain was pretty local – a couple counties over from where I now live
- I could simply go into the county office and wait for the documents
- I had located a translator and she stated she would turn the translations around in less than a week from when she received the scanned images of the documents
- The translator would email me the translations and I just needed to print them out
So, as of December, everything was looking ok.
The next step was to get my Grandfather’s death certificate (certified, of course), and then have it apostilled. (Oh yeah, the apostilles for his death certificate, my birth certificate, and my parents’ marriage certificate all had to be sent to Springfield, IL to be processed). I checked to see if I could send them to somewhere in Chicago for this, but no, they had to be mailed to Springfield. So now that added a variable. The apostilles take 2-4 weeks until I get them back.
So, ok, I’m at the beginning of December. I get the documents in early December, send them to Springfield, get them back by the last week of December, the translator translates them and I’ll be ready by the first week of January. And my appointment won’t even be MADE until the first week of January, so I’m cool.
Anyway, being busy working, and having to also watch my budget, I decided to start by just getting my grandfather’s death certificate. (The other 2 documents could be done while I wait so I can always do those next week.)
Rather than go to the County office, I decided to mail for a copy of his death certificate. There’s a handy-dandy form at the County’s web site (isn’t the internet great?) I filled this in, got a money order, and off it went in the mail.
Week two of December delivers me a beautiful certified death certificate. Everything looks in order. I forgot, his name is one of the variances he used. I still need to figure out what I’m going to do about names not perfectly matching! I’ll start looking into that right away.
And to put this document to bed and have it ready for translation, I make a copy of it (so I can have the translator do it while I’m waiting for the apostille to come in).
And off to Springfield it goes.
Better work on the final two documents since I still have some issues about the name changes/variances to resolve.
I’m now ready to get my birth certificate and my parents’ marriage certificate…
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