Adoptions

Applying for a birth certificate

Births Deaths and Marriages Tasmania registers all legal adoptions that occur in Tasmania.

If you have been legally adopted, your birth certificate will show your adoptive parents, as they are recognised as your legal parents.

You can apply for your birth certificate online, apply in person at Service Tasmania or apply by post.

Searching for a birth parent or child

You can apply for information regarding your natural parent or child through Adoption and Permanency Services (external link).

They can authorise us to issue pre-adoptive birth certificates, by giving you a certificate of interview (section 80 certificate).

This certificate proves that you have attended an interview with a counsellor, who has explained your rights and helped you to consider some of the matters that may arise as part of the search and reunion process.

Adopted person over 18

After you have been issued a certificate of interview, you can apply for:

  • a copy of the pre-adoptive birth record
  • birth certificate of birth parent
  • change of name or death certificate of birth parent
  • marriage certificate of the birth parents
  • marriage extract of the birth mother (if the marriage is not to the father named on the birth record). This limited record may help trace a birth mother who has assumed a different name after marriage.

Birth parents of adopted children, once a child is over 18

After you have been issued a certificate of interview, you can apply for:

  • the adopted child’s original birth certificate
  • the child’s post-adoptive birth record
  • change of name of child or death certificate of child.

Adoption support and advice

If you need more information, support or advice, please contact Adoption and Permanency Services (external link)

Last updated: 10 February 2023