Early on in my tenure at this blog, I looked at one of the aspects to the documentation you need to assemble for a Russian adoption: the apostille. Now, I'd like to talk about what happens when good apostilles go bad. Or, at least, when a judge in Russia thinks that they did.


The modern-day apostille was created in 1961 by an international agreement on how documents should be legalized for use between countries. The idea was to find some common standards and formats by which countries could recognize a document as authentic. Inter-country adoption wasn't really on the horizon then, but apostilled documents have become central to the whole process since then.

The 1961 Hague Convention agreement (oddly named the "Convention Abolishing The Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents") did simplify things, but it did not entirely unify apostille formats and that continues to cause problems today. Massachusetts doesn't apostille documents in the same way as Rhode Island; Alabama doesn't do them the way Ohio does. (New Jersey and Oklahoma charge the most for an apostille--$25--and Hawaii the least--$1.) And, from time to time, that causes headaches for those of us adopting from Russia.

Though the differences in apostille style may seem insanely small to you and me, a judge accustomed to seeing documents with a California apostille may do a double-take when presented with a file authenticated in Delaware. Or worse: The judge may hold up the adoption to get clarification from superiors in the region or in Moscow.

It shouldn't be that way: On the Web site of the U.S. embassy in Moscow it says, "A document bearing an apostille is legal and valid in Russia as well as other countries that are signatories to the Hague Legalization Convention of 1961." And if it makes those of you who have had your apostilles challenged feel better, the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok notes that sometimes Russian officials don't know that Russia is a signatory to the 1961 convention, and sends Russians to the U.S. consulate to get Russian documents apostilled for use in the U.S.

What can you do to avoid an apostille emergency? I'll offer some tips in a follow-up post. In the meantime, apologies to my readers in Canada: Your country is not a party to the 1961 convention, so you can't get your documents certified with an apostille. I'll see if I can unravel that riddle later.

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