The 6 Month Recertification Requirement
In December of 1997, the Chinese Ministry of Justice advised embassies working in adoption in China that documents in your dossier will have a six-month notarial validity period from the date of authentication by the Chinese Consulate/Embassy.
The Ministry of Justice began enforcing the 6-month validity period as of January 1, 1998.
Since most dossiers take longer than 6 months to process from the time a dossier is submitted to the China Center for Adoption Affairs to when a child is referred, with travel taking place about 6 weeks later, this potentially would have required many, if not all, adopting parents to obtain and re-authenticate many of their documents.
OK, before you have a heart attack, take a deep breath. The way that the CCAA is measuring the 6 months should result in this affecting very few people. However, it is very important that you understand how this works.
This requirement has been clarified as follows:
The six month rule REMAINS in place.
HOWEVER, the time that a dossier spends being processed by the CCAA DOES NOT count towards the six months.
Thus, assuming that most prospective parents submit their dossiers to CCAA (through adoption agencies, of course), within a month or two after all their documents have been authenticated, AND, assuming that most prospective parents travel within a month or two after they receive a referral, then they would not be affected by the six month rule at all.
This seems to be an accommodation reached between the Chinese Department of Civil Affairs and Justice, each claiming jurisdiction over that part of the process available to them without stepping on anyone's toes. When your dossier is at the CCAA, it is under the auspices of Civil Affairs and therefore beyond the control of Justice.
Here's an example:
The Jones family decide to pursue adoption from China on January 1, 1997 and engage a U.S. adoption agency. They immediately apply for advanced processing approval from INS (Form I-600A, which generates Form 171H upon approval), and start assembling all of the documents for their dossier.
For the sake of this example, let's say ALL of the documents are authenticated on April 1, 1997. The CCAA actually goes by the date on the consulate or embassy authentication stamp. You can think of it as the clock starting when the Chinese first become aware that the docs exist.
They send the authenticated documents to their agency, and the agency submits it to CCAA on May 1, 1997.
On March 1, 1998, the Jones family receives and accepts referral of a child, followed by travel approval on April 15, 1998.
The Jones family completes the entire adoption process and returns to the U.S. in May, 1998.
Their documents, which were authenticated on April 1, 1997, are still valid because only the months of April 1997, March 1998 and April 1998 are counted within the six-month rule. The clock stops altogether from May 1, 1997 through March 1, 1998.
IMPORTANT: Because this process can become fairly complex, families would be very well served to keep a separate calendar noting exactly when which documents were authenticated, dtc, referral, etc. It's easy to get confused and it would very unfortunate for anyone to get caught in this.
If you have any questions at all about this, or if you think you may be affected, please contact World Child immediately.
