Ohio Adoptee Searches has served the adoption community for nearly 45 years with expert search services. Started with a single personal search in 1967, OAS has grown to locate and reunite thousands of Ohio adoptees and first families. We are an independent company with no professional or financial ties to the state or the adoption industry. YOU control your search, and we will never do something you don't want us to do. It's YOUR information , you have a right to it, and you're our boss!
Although our name is Ohio ADOPTEE Searches, our clientele is not limited to adoptees. Many of our clients are birthparents, and grandparents, adoptive parents, and birth and adoptive siblings, all of who want information and relationships with family members separated by secret adoption laws. None of us are state secrets, no matter what archaic adoption laws, passed decades ago, claim.
OAS is currently in a transition stage and will become much more visible and accessible to the Ohio adoption community. This blog is part of our growth. I'll be posting commentary and fact sheets about current records access laws in Ohio (and sometimes other states), support group events and information, news articles about adoption in Ohio, and any other adoption topic that you (or I) find interesting. .
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As some of you know from bitter experience, the Ohio legislature has, over the last 48 years,
divided its adoptees into three nonsensical classes.Those adopted before January 1, 1964 can obtain their OBC and adoption decree by submitting a notarized Affidavit of Adopted Person , sufficient identification, and $20.00 to Vital Statistics. Those whose adoptions are finalized between January 1, 1964 and September 18, 1996 cannot receive their OBC without a court order, which is extremely difficult to get. The state runs an alleged family reunion registry for these folks, but it is near useless. In over two decades of adoptee rights activism I've only heard of two people who made a hit on the registry, one a birthfather, and the other an adoptee who did her own search successfully and learned later that her birth dad was on it. At the moment, I can't even find a link for it. Those adopted after September 18, 1996 can receive their OBC at the age of 18 if their adoptive parents request it, and at the age of 21, in their own name--UNLESS a birthparent has filed a disclosure veto with the state which authorizes the state to bar release. This veto goes straight into the state-locked up adoption file without any tracking so no one, not even official Vital Statistics bean counters, knows how many vetoes have been filed. The number, however, appears to be small.. I'll be writing about disclosure vetoes and how they harm us all, in a future entry.
In the next few days I'll be posting some news articles and opinions/blogs from previous legislative campaigns to restore the right of OBC access to all Ohio adoptees. Some are my own work; some the work of others.The last attempt to fix Ohio's broken access system took place in 2008 ,but the bill died in the Ohio House Health Committee. Although no opposition as voiced publicly--plenty was said behind closed doors. These pieces will appear as blog entries, and also be linked to the original sources (if possible) in a sidebar.
Thanks for joining us here If you have any questions about Ohio law, activism, search and support, please drop me a line at marleyoas@gmail.com or post them here as a comment.
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