Help Me Find a Birth Certificate

This is something we hear on a regular basis. For whatever reason, a client is looking for a copy of a family member’s birth certificate in Brazil and they need help finding it. They don’t speak Portuguese and they don’t know where to begin.

In some cases, it’s pretty straightforward. If you know where the person was born, and you have their complete name and their CPF number, then it shouldn’t be too hard. The problem is when you’re missing that information.

Like other forms of publicly filed documents, Brazil doesn’t have a central database that can be easily searched. You can’t just type in a person’s name and find their birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate and the like. Instead, these documents can be filed at notary offices anywhere in the country.

There are certainly things you can try. For example, you can visit the notary offices that are closest to the hospital where the person was born (assuming you know the location). Or you might try searching offices that are closest to where they lived.

If the document you’re looking for isn’t recent, you also might not find it in any notary office. This is often the case with birth certificates for great-grandparents.

If you’re set on finding what you need, come prepared with as much information as possible. For starters, you’ll need at least the person’s full name and CPF number. Without those basic details, expect it to be a long, exhausting and costly process.