Registering a birth in Brazil

No children for me to register.

Jim

I have one biological son, born here in Brazil, and one adopted son.
After our son was born, we left the hospital with a yellow sheet of paper which was his declaration of live birth (DNV - Declaração de Nascido Vivo).  With this declaration, we went to the registry office (Cartório) and obtained a birth certificate (Certidão de Nascimento).  You also need all your personal documentation.
I was later told that many hospitals insist you do the birth certificate before leaving the hospital.  Not sure if this is true as it wasn't my experience.

As for who can register... it can be either parent if they have the legal identification of the other parent and the marriage certificate.  If the mother is a single mother, she can list the names of possible fathers and the government will subpoena them for DNA tests, or she can leave it blank if she doesn't want to disclose the father.

it is a very simple and fast process.  You get the birth certificate in the same hour that you register it.  As for registering in other countries... that all depends on the rules of each country.  But usually if you are a citizen of a country and you have a birth certificate proving this is your child, they can be registered as a citizen of your country of birth. 

It is very important to note, that it is almost impossible to legally change your name here in Brazil.  It's not like in other countries, where with a simple form and payment of an administration fee, you can legally change a name.  So  be sure of what name you want. 

hope this helped

Our experiences, though similar, are several years old. We registered a child and adopted a set of twins out of Brazil. For both, we had to take the hospital document to the local cartorio (document registration center). We also had the names of the adopted children changed, which took little time at all.

Before you leave the cartorio, make sure you get multiple certified copies of the documents. For us, they were cheap and the possibility of not being back for quite a while makes multiple copies of documents important. If you take them to your home country, make sure you get translations done to avoid delays when you may need them.  (I have helped out several people in the Minneapolis area with document translation because they did not have a translation available. Translation is possibly cheaper out of Brazil because of their system of "certified"  translators.

Always register your foreign birth with your consulate. The ability for a child to have multiple citizenships is both unique and sometimes very helpful. Registration well after the birth maybe much more problematic.