Birthing Center: Birth Certificates

A Parents Guide to Hospital Birth Registration in Massachusetts

YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE IS A VALUABLE DOCUMENT

Your baby’s birth certificate is a legal document that proves the facts of birth and makes a birth a permanently record in Massachusetts’s vital records. Birth registration creates a public health record as well. At this time your baby is getting a permanent legal document. Also, DPH is getting information to add up statistical facts about Massachusetts’s births each year. Birth certificates should be completed before mother and baby are discharged home. The hospital is required to record birth at city hall in ten days.

Hospitals obtain birth certificate information by means of a worksheet or interview, and it is very important that you answer every question completely. Information to record the birth in Massachusetts include: name of the baby, birth places, social security numbers and home addressed of the parents. You will need to make the birth registrar aware if you are married currently or anytime within 300 days before delivery, married but husband not father, divorced, and date. Your current status is important for the process on your baby’s birth certificate. The birth registrar needs to complete the appropriate documents required by the State. You will also be asked statistical questions: race, education, etc, this information helps doctors and public health planners find out facts about health and characteristics of mothers and babies. Statistical information is kept strictly confidential and sent directly to DPH, separated from the legal record that is sent to city clerk.

At the hospital during the birth certificate process you will have the option of applying for a social security card for your child. If you apply you will receive the social security card in the mail within six weeks.

The birth certificate is completed by birth registrar, signed by mother/parents and sent off to the City Hall to be recorded. It is the parents responsibility to pick up a certified copy there after ten days or whenever needed. There is a fee for the birth certificate.

Paternity Acknowledgment Program: In Massachusetts, unmarried parents can legally acknowledge paternity at the hospital delivery. A special form, acknowledgment of Parentage AT-Birth allows the birth registrar to list the father on your baby’s birth certificate at the time the baby is born. The mother must be unmarried (or provide a Denial of Paternity from her husband); both parents must sign acknowledgment and provide identification for the birth registrar/notary.

Need More Information

Acknowledgment of Parentage or Denial of Paternity affidavits:
Call: Registry at 1-617-7402600
Email:vital.regulation@state.ma.us
Website for Registry of Vital Records: www.mass.gov/dph/bhsre/rvr/rvr.htm 

Birth Registration questions:
Call: Registry of Vital Records at 1-617-740-2600
Call: Caritas Holy Family Hospital Birth Registrar at (978) 687-0156 x2084
Call: City Hall Clerk (978) 983-8595