When soliciting Dominican Civil Status Records, receiving birth, marriage, divorce and death certificates with grammatical and material errors is quite common. Regardless if the person requesting the document is Dominican or a foreigner the probability of our Courts and Civil Registry Offices issuing documents with mistakes is relatively high as a result of documenting these events manually and not having these registries digitalized.
In our country, all issues related to these documents are regulated by Law 659 dated July 17, 1944 regarding Civil Status Records.
The current procedure to rectify or amend Civil Status Records in the Dominican Republic, those which are issued by Civil Registry Offices around the country, result to be quite bureaucratic and long rather than complex and tedious. In order to initiate the process, a letter addressed to the Civil Court of the Civil Registry Office’s Jurisdiction where the certificate is registered must be deposited requesting the correction of such document. The solicitant must attach additional documents that serve as proof the documents indeed contains an error.
The Court responsible of handling rectifications of minors’ Civil Status Records is the Court for Children and Adolescents of the Civil Registry Office’s jurisdiction where the certificate is registered. These rectifications must be requested by these children and adolescent’s parents or by the person granted legal custody.
It is important to mention although the title holder of the certificate must be the person to initiate this procedure personally or by granting power to an attorney, the General Attorney may initiate this procedure at his discretion in order to maintain public order as long as they notify the title holder and without prejudice of their entitled rights. The General Attorney could also request the amendment of the Civil Status Records of individuals with lessresources who request directly this procedure.
In the event the Civil Status Records that will be corrected have been issued outside of the Dominican Republic, the Civil Court will be competent of knowing such rectification, if such documents have been transcribed in the corresponding registry of the Dominican state. For example, if an American marries a Dominican citizen in the Dominican Republic and after married they decide to register their marriage in the Dominican Republic, they will have the right to request any amendments in the Dominican Republic.
After the letter has been deposited in the Civil Court and a decree has been issued authorizing the corresponding rectification, the interested party must request the approval of the Central Electoral Board who will emit a letter authorizing the rectification to the Civil Registry Office, entity which will be responsible of issuing a newly corrected certificate.
This procedure can be quite simple, however, it can also be very complex and slow if at the moment when the Judge initially evaluates the case, being this an administrative procedure, he considers there are not sufficient and trusty elements to prove the certificate must be amended. In this case, the Judge will request new documents to be deposited that justify their petition. If new documents are deposited and the Judge does not consider valid the petition, he can deny the petition through a decree, obliging the solicitant to initiate once again a rectification request.
However, if the request is approved by the Civil Court and the Central Electoral Board, the Civil Registry Office where the certificate is registered will correct the error and issue a new certificate containing the corresponding annotations.