Where does a replacement US birth or marriage certificate come from?

You order it from the vital records office of the US state where the birth or marriage was registered — not from a US embassy, and not from the federal government. Only that state’s Secretary of State can then apostille it. Whether the office will post the certificate to a foreign address varies from state to state.

That single sentence solves most of the confusion, because the two instincts an overseas reader has are both wrong. The embassy cannot print a state certificate; it has no access to a state register. And there is no national US birth index to write to. If you were born in Ohio and married in Nevada, you are dealing with two separate offices, two separate Secretaries of State, and two separate timelines that will not run in step with each other.

If you need to find the right office, the CDC’s Where to Write for Vital Records directory lists the correct issuing agency for every state and territory, including which ones hold marriage records at county rather than state level.

Which authority apostilles it — the state or the Department of State?

This fork decides everything downstream, and getting it wrong costs you a full round trip of international post.

• State-issued documents — birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, divorce decrees, court records, and anything notarised by a notary commissioned in that state — are apostilled by the Secretary of State of the issuing state. The state of issuance. Not where you last lived, not where your parents live now.
• Federal documents — an FBI Identity History Summary, an IRS Form 6166 tax residency certificate, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Naturalization — are authenticated by the US Department of State, Office of Authentications in Washington. No state can touch them.

Which documents will the receiving authority want?

The exact list is set by the office abroad that will receive the file — an immigration department, a civil registry, a university, a bank. Get their written checklist before you order anything. The table below covers the documents that overseas Americans are asked for most often, and who handles each one.

How do you order a certificate with no US address?

Three routes, in the order they tend to work:

1. Have the issuing office ship straight to your filing agent. If the vital records office lets you nominate a delivery address, send the certified copy directly to whoever will file the apostille in the United States. The document never leaves the country and never crosses customs until it comes back to you finished.
2. Use a family member’s US address. Simple, free, and the failure mode is a relative who opens the envelope, folds the certificate, or forwards it by ordinary post. Tell them not to open it and to hand it on with tracking.
3. Use a commercial mail-forwarding address. Works, but adds a handling stage. Check the state office actually accepts a commercial mail receiving agency address — some flag them.

Two separate hurdles trip people up here. First, most states restrict certified copies to the registrant or an immediate family member and require a signed, often notarised application plus a copy of government ID. Second, some order portals reject non-US billing addresses or foreign-issued cards. Check both before you build a timeline around the order.

Why can’t a notary in my country notarise it?

A US Secretary of State can only certify signatures held on its own register — notaries it commissioned and state officials whose seals it maintains. A notary commissioned in France, Vietnam, Brazil or anywhere else is not on that register, so a document bearing a foreign notary’s seal cannot receive a US state apostille. It comes back unprocessed, and you have lost the round trip.

This bites hardest on a power of attorney — the document you most likely need if you want a relative to collect records or act for you in the US. Your options:

• Notarial services at a US embassy or consulate. A consular officer’s notarial act is a federal act, and the consular seal is authenticated by the US Department of State — not by a state. Many posts require an appointment weeks ahead and some have limited notarial services, so check the specific embassy’s page early.
• Local notary plus your country’s own apostille. If the document is for use inside the United States and your country of residence is an Apostille Convention party, a local notary plus an apostille from that country’s competent authority is the normal, fast route. No US authority is involved at all.
• Send the unsigned document to the US. If someone in the US is signing — a registrar, a custodian of records, a school official — they sign before a notary commissioned in their own state, and that state apostilles it.

One useful distinction: the notarised affidavit on a vital records application form is not being apostilled. It only has to satisfy the vital records office. Some offices accept a consular notarisation, some accept a foreign notary on the application, and some will not. Ask that office directly rather than assuming.

How recent does the certificate have to be?

The United States does not expire certified copies — a birth certificate issued years ago is still a valid certified copy. The age limit is imposed by the office abroad receiving it, and the two questions you must put to them in writing are:

• Does the clock run from the certificate’s issue date or from the apostille date? These produce very different deadlines and this is a routine cause of rejection.
• Is the limit measured at the date of submission or at the date of decision? A file that sits in a queue can age out after you filed it.

Work backwards from your appointment. Count the order at the vital records office, the domestic transit to the filing address, the apostille filing itself, any translation stage in your destination country, and the international return leg with customs. Order your certificate too early and it ages out; order it too late and it is still in transit on the day of your appointment. Neither we nor any courier can guarantee an international delivery date — customs clearance is outside anyone’s control — so build slack in rather than counting on a best case.

Do you need a translation as well as an apostille?

Almost always, if the destination does not work in English. An apostille authenticates a signature and seal; it translates nothing. What varies is who is allowed to translate:

• Many civil-law countries accept only a sworn or court-registered translator — an office that does not exist in the United States. In that case the translation is produced in your destination country, after the apostille is attached, so that the apostille itself is included in the translated file.
• Other authorities accept a certified translation prepared in the US. If so, the translator’s certification statement is itself a private document: it must be notarised by a notary in a US state, and that notarisation apostilled separately.

We file apostilles; we do not provide translation. Ask the receiving authority which of the two models it uses before you commit to a sequence, because doing it in the wrong order means paying for the translation twice.

Apostille or legalization — which applies to your country?

Check your country of residence on the HCCH Apostille Convention status table before you order anything, and check it yourself rather than relying on a summary page, because accessions have been frequent and third-party lists lag. Note the entry-into-force date: a country that has signed but whose accession is not yet in force still requires the legalization route today.

If the country is not a party, the document is not apostilled. It goes through consular legalization: certification at the state level, authentication by the US Department of State, then legalization at that country’s embassy or consulate in the United States. That is a longer chain with an extra queue at the end, and it is filed in the US — not in your country of residence. Also check the HCCH table for any objection affecting the US–destination pair, which can force legalization even between two member states.

For a worked example of how this plays out for an American living abroad, see our walkthrough on getting a US document apostilled while living in Vietnam.

What about shipping the original both ways?

This is the part people lose sleep over, and the reassuring part is a distinction worth internalising:

• Replaceable: certified copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, court-certified divorce decrees, transcripts. If one is lost, you reorder it. Annoying and slow; not a catastrophe.
• Hard to replace: a Certificate of Naturalization or Certificate of Citizenship — replacement runs through USCIS Form N-565 and is measured in months, not weeks. Read our notes on how a Certificate of Naturalization is apostilled and on Certificate of Citizenship apostille requirements before you post one anywhere.
• Genuinely irreplaceable: an original diploma, an old family document, anything the issuer will not reprint.

Practical rules: use a tracked courier with a signature on both legs rather than ordinary international post; declare the contents as documents with no commercial value; keep high-resolution scans of everything before it leaves your hands; and never send an irreplaceable original when a fresh certified copy would satisfy the receiving authority. Where a document must be apostilled in a specific state, having the issuing office ship it domestically to your filing agent removes one international crossing entirely — that is why the ordering sequence in the steps above matters.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

• Filed in the wrong state. Sent to the Secretary of State where you last lived rather than the state that issued the certificate. The most common single error for overseas applicants.
• Not a certified copy. A photocopy, a scan, a hospital souvenir certificate, or a commemorative marriage certificate from the ceremony. Only the certified copy from the registrar carries a certifiable signature.
• Abstract instead of long form. Some foreign authorities require the long-form certificate showing parents’ details; a short-form abstract is refused at the destination even after it has been correctly apostilled.
• Missing county-level certification. Where a marriage record was issued by a county or town clerk, several states require that clerk’s signature to be certified before the state will apostille.
• Foreign notarisation. Signed before a notary abroad and sent to a US state. Structurally impossible to process.
• Electronic certificate printed at home. Some states issue electronic vital records with verification links; whether the state will apostille a self-printed version and whether your destination accepts an electronic apostille both need checking first.
• Destination not named. Many states print the destination country on the apostille request; an omitted or wrong country can mean re-filing.
• Aged out in transit. The certificate met the destination’s recency rule on the day it was ordered and not on the day it was submitted.
• Legalization needed, apostille obtained. The country is not an Apostille Convention party, and the apostille has no standing there.
• Staples removed or pages separated. Do not unstaple a multi-page certified record, and do not laminate anything.

What order should you do this in?

1. Get the receiving authority’s checklist in writing. Document list, long or short form, age limit and its start date, translation rules, and whether the file is submitted locally or at a consulate in the US.
2. Confirm the route. Check your country on the HCCH status table. Apostille or consular legalization — everything after this depends on the answer.
3. Order the certified copy from the issuing state. Use the state’s own portal or mail application; nominate a US delivery address that the filing party controls.
4. File the apostille with the correct authority. Issuing state’s Secretary of State for a vital record; US Department of State for a federal record. The issuing agency charges a filing fee, which is included in our flat price of $120 per apostille, all-inclusive.
5. Translate, if required, in the form your destination accepts. If a sworn translator is required, this happens after the apostille is attached.
6. Ship back with tracking. Tracked courier both ways, scans retained, no guaranteed delivery date promised to your appointment officer.

Reverse steps two and three and you can end up with an apostille on a document a non-Hague country will not accept. Reverse four and five and you pay for the translation twice. Skip step one and you find out at the counter that they wanted the long-form certificate.

Requirements differ by state and by receiving country, and the authority receiving your file has the final say on what it accepts.

Starting your order from abroad

Tell us which document you need, which state issued it, and the country it is going to. We identify the correct authority — issuing state’s Secretary of State or the US Department of State — file it, and courier it to you overseas, at $120 per apostille, all-inclusive, with no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons. We are a private document service and are not affiliated with the US Department of State, any US embassy or consulate, or any foreign government. If you already know the state, our state pages cover the filing detail, including Florida apostilles filed in Tallahassee and Idaho apostilles filed in Boise. Have your appointment date to hand when you start — we plan the sequence backwards from it.