AnalysisSenate Bill 1377 raises the fees for authentication of notarized documents from the Secretary of State and sets fees for authentication of documents to support an application for adoption of a child. In preparing to adopt a child from a foreign country, adoptive parents must compile an adoption dossier, a collection of specific documents that are sent to a foreign country in order to process the adoption in court. The documents needed for a dossier vary by country, but typically include financial statements, personal reference forms, personal and family medical records, and immigration papers. Many of these forms must be notarized and duly authenticated in order to be accepted by foreign officials. The maximum fee established by the new law was set to minimize the expense of obtaining individual apostilles for all the documents in the dossier, which could be prohibitively expensive for many adoptive parents.
Read Senate Bill 1377.