Hello,

for those of you expats, who expect your child to be born in Zurich :

Understand that the documents and procedures needed to obtain a birth certificate for your new born would vary very much depending on the parents nationality.

I recommend that you should try and get a first hand information on procedures/documents needed directly from below office in Zurich.

Bevölkerungsamt der Stadt Zürich
(Zivilstandtamt, Geburten und Sterbefälle)
Stadthaus, Stadthausquai 17, Postfach, 8022, Zürich

Telefon : 044/412 31 11
Direct line : 044/412 31 55
I could not find any website for this office.


This office has a database with list of documents that are needed for every nationality and they could give you a print out.
They speak English and are helpful.

best regards
-ilango

what if you're giving birth somewhere else?

I've never heard anyone having problems getting birth certificates - don't forget also I assume to register the birth at your own consulate or embassy

In Zurich stadt, the Stadt authorities request for parents marriage certificate and birth certificates to be verified and attested by the Govenrment of their Nationality. Afterwards they have to be verified again and legalised by the Swiss embassy at their home country.

The whole procedure is complex depending on where you come from, it takes about 4months to complete and it costs around 650CHF atleast for Indians.

Only when the Zurich authorities issue a birth certificate, the embassy of their nationality would register and issue a passport. And with out a passport, the child does not get a Residence permit. Hence you cannot travel out of Switzerland with the child during this period.

This was the reason, I thought it was better to share my experience and get others experience as well. Of course the rules vary from canton to canton and these rules in Zurich are the latest atleast from last year.

If people know in advance, they could initiate this process much earlier before the child is born.

I invite others to share their recent experience as well.

all very throughtfully & throroughly organised by the the Frauenklinik in Bern, along with the Civil Standisamt .... 2 weeks later new family book .... 2 weeks after that nice little C Ausweis from Gemeinde. So not sure why people are jumping through hoops elsewhere.

We had similar problem last year. Geminde Zollikon asked for parents birth certificates not older than 6 months although i gave them the original ones from UK but issued in 2001. I have to order new ones for both of us (2 weeks and 60GBP). Geminde told us that they have changed there software and the system is not accepting any issue dates of certificates which are over 6 months mark.

But you are correct in saying that other nationalities have problem. A work colleague mentioned about paying 1000CHF for the investigation procedure for the birth certificate.

Birth certs from partners under 6 months are normal for marriage certfificate & birth. Haven't really heard of anyone having any other real problems, mind you, most of my non Swiss friends are EU, maybe makes a difference.

I am a non-EU and some of our known contacts who are non-EU have had similar problems to get birth certificates.

The rules, also depend on exact nationality of the parents and the canton where they live. Some of my non-EU contacts who had their children born in cantons other than Zurich did not have any problems. I presume this is a problem only in Zurich.

Hello ilango,

I am from india and i read your post regarding the birth certificate. Its very usefull. I have few questions regarding this. Could you please spend sometime for me to give me the below information

1) What are the details they have asked for for obtaining birth certificate? My wife has given birth to a baby boy last week and we have submitted the details like our permit(Auswies),passport copies, and marriage certificate(attested also by swiss embassy mumbai). Is this sufficient or will they ask for parents birth certificates? In india we will treat 10th standard certificate as DOB proof. Will they accept this as the same?

Helo Sivam,
Yes this is a swiss thing , I have to produce a birth certificate and passport that are NOT older than 6months everytime I re-new my permit . I am married now so next time will be in 5 years but untill we were married here this was usual . I also had to pay a registered translator to translate the things too.
All 3 of my kids were born to a swiss wife so theres no problem and our freinds who are UK nationals also had no problems.. yes it could be a zurich thing.
Best advice is to ask your local community office they should be able to clear it up for you.
Simon.

We are going through the process of registering our new born for a birth certificate at the moment. I am an Australian citizen, and my wife is US, UK and Irish citizen. We thought we were well prepared however have been stumped by the "not older than 6 month" birth certificate. My parents are coming from Australia for Christmas and we will not be able to travel with our son outside Switzerland. He is booked on a flight in February to the US, so we are paying expedite fees left, right and center at the moment to ensure he gets the necessary documentation. Once we have the birth certificate, it will be a race amongst the three consulates as to who sends him a passport first (as discussed elsewhere on the forum British citizenship requires a period of residency if the parent's citizenship is inherited).

I must say the staff are very helpful.

My wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy on the 05.11.2007 at Winterthur cantonal hospital. We thought it would be enough to send in copies of our C and B permits, as well as copies of all our documents issued when we entered Switzerland but we are now faced with the 6 month rule as well then some.
My wife does not have an official birth certificate since she was born at home in Taiwan, what she has is a National Identity card which was accepted by the immigration in Bern but not by the zivilamt. Same goes for our marriage certificate. We were married in Sweden (I am Swedish) in 2003 and the marriage was then registered and approved in Switzerland but the zivilamt still requires us to prove that we are married by asking for a new marriage certificate.

Why not establish a separate Swiss national registration database for all foreigners containing all the documents. Once you get your B / C permit and is registered, the authorities should be able to check your data on-line, and then go ahead, and issue the birth certificate, new permits etc.

Our situation is similar to most people here, our son is now an illegal person, but we can make tax deductions for him as well as get a health insurance cover for him…. It makes me wonder about the logic in this system. As a result, we cannot leave Switzerland and we cannot apply for Swedish passport unless we have the birth certificate.

The other thing I don't understand about this is unless I'm totally blind, neither my UK birth cert, or my husband's US one, actually have any issue dates on them. So how do 'they' know whether you've had the thing for years or just got it yesterday?

For Brits having a baby in Zurich you need the following:

- Both Parent's Birth Certificates (Originals - less than 6 months old). Contact the Register Office in the UK. English and Welsh can order online (it seems you can get practically any birth certificate you want if you fancied a spate of identity theft), however Scots must send a letter or phone them up (Good old Scotland keeping up with the times - you'd never have thought we'd invented the telephone. It went downhill since then). Costs £13 for normal (2 weeks) delivery or £23 for Priority (2-3 days).

- Marriage Certificate (Original - doesn't matter how old). If you're living in Sin, I presume it doesn't matter. Until Judgement day, at least.

- Passport (Copies of the page with the embarrassing photo on will do)

- Auslander Ausweis ( Copies for this will also do).

Currently investigating how quickly we can get a passport so we can get the baby back to meet the grandparents before it's a stroppy teenager. Wish us luck.

If anyone has any info on how quickly this can be turned around, we'd appreciate a heads up so we can think about booking flights.

Thanks.

Thanks for clearing that up then! Good luck with the passport stuff, and keep us posted - I'll be needing that next. I'm currently renewing my elder son's American one and its turning out to be a nightmare.... In fact, I fear I may be sinking fast in a sea of paperwork and admin right now!!

Dear All,

I can share this important and usefull information for the parents who gave birth to newborn in zurich. We had similar problems for birth certificate as you all facing. So we went to the office at helvitiaplatz and discussed with the lady about this issue. Since we had to leave switzerland at any cost she asked us to generate proofs that we are leaving switzerland. Also she mentioned clearly that we have to leave swiss as i have mentioned in the proof. So my company has given letter that i am leaving switzerland permanently and i got the certificate in a week. But only thing is in the birth certificate parents details will be there; but in grand parents option it will be left blank since we did not produce our birth certificates. I hope this will help you all incase you are leaving swiss otherwise we have no other choice.

*Imp Note: They have verified whether we left switzerland or not. So be cautious.

Hi Sivam,

We had corresponded earlier regarding the BC - guess what - We STILL havent got it - our baby was born in JULY!! Could you please tell me which office in Paradeplatz did you go to and who was the contact person?

hi..so sad that you still not received the BC.. the office is not in paredplatz.. its helvitiaplatz..i didnt remember the name of the lady.. incase you want to leave switzerland then you can produce the proofs and can get the certificate in a week..

hi - we went and fought - now they say it can be made in a week! but tell me - is the BC they issue now alright for the passport application? have you got your child's passport?

yes the BC they give is enough for passport. As i mentioned earlier the BC will not have your child grand parentsd details. i.e. your parents details will not be there. Rest is fine. my child got passport and we are happily back in my home country

very very cool how lucky are you - we are still in a deadlock with the stadt house ( Thanks a lot for the info though - thanks to you atleast we realised that putting up a fight is required for the 'oh-so-prompt' swissies too!