Hi,

Has anyone had any experience sending original documents (UK marriage license and birth certificate) to the International Pension Center pursuant to applying for your British pension while living in the U.S. I live in Virginia, where state law will not allow notary publics to notarize copies of what are termed "vital documents," which marriage licenses and birth certificates are considered to be. I'm reluctant to submit the original copies along with my application. Should I be? Would un-notarized photo copies suffice?

I tried to search on the forum for previous posts on this topic to no avail. Any advice would be most appreciated.

In advance, thanks!

Sandra

You can easily order UK documents online to get extra copies. In fact what you have is an official copy, of the original entry in the register back in the UK. I sent my pension stuff back by UPS. More expensive than the USPS but for some explainable reason I feel UPS is safer than USPS.

https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-...ge-certificate

The easiest way is to call IPS , or email them. They are very helpful indeed. If you email, it may take a few days to get a response.
I know in the UK that my solicitor certified some copies of documents for me - They copied them and signed them as "true copy of ----". These were accepted by various government agencies both in UK and elsewhere. I think the reason for this is that the person signing the documents can be traced and verified by professional registers etc.
Maybe you have a local attorney who can do this?

If you were born and married in England or Wales then you can order spare copies online from the General Register Office for £9.25 a pop.

Exactly, this is what I've done, simply got a new copy from the GRO. Since they have no intrinsic value, you can save money on postage, just send them first class post. They qualify as original copies.

While I agree they have no intrinsic value, they are very useful documents for identity theft. I would be very reluctant to send them by any method that wasn't trackable, and personally feel safer having them handled by a courier rather than the post office. The latter just based on seeing how mail and couriers handled stuff at Heathrow.

But anyone can order any birth, marriage or death certificate.

Never needing to order any online I didn't realise it was that easy.