Correcting Your Legal Sex Designation

Overview

After undergoing GRS, it is possible to get your Birth Certificate ammended to reflect your actual gender. Previous names will also be omitted from the certificate. It takes a little while, but it is not an unduly complicated process, and does not require the assistance of a lawyer. However, because it is not a very common request, the individual staff members with whom you deal may not be familiar with the procedure. It is therefore a good idea to know what is involved yourself.

The first step is to get a "Declaration as to Sex" from the Family Court (part of the District Court). For this, you will need:

• Your current Birth Certificate.
• A letter from your surgeon confirming that they carried out the relevant surgery.
• A letter from your GP confirming that surgery has taken place.
• A letter from a psychiatrist/psychologist giving their evaluation of your gender (one of the same letters required by the surgeon before surgery should be sufficient).
• An FP 15 form, which you must supply yourself (it's a generic form which must be customised for various specific purposes which aren't common enough to be worth an official form of their own). Here is a sample.
• An application for hearing, which will be filled in by the Family Court. Here is a sample.
• An FP 7 form, supplied by the Court, which is a very basic piece of bueraucracy that only requires you to fill in your name, address, etc.

When you submit the application at the Family Court (consisting of original documents only, not photocopies), you will be given a hearing date, probably about a month away. The Court then notifies Births, Deaths, and Marriages of your application. The hearing itself consists solely of recording that the documentation supplied is satisfactory and that Births, Deaths, and Marriages has not submitted any objection in the allotted time. It is not necessary to attend the hearing, and most people don't turn up. A week or three after the hearing, your declaration will be posted to you. There is no charge for the Family Court declaration, and you can request that your original documents be returned to you.

The second step is to apply for a new Birth Certificate from the Births, Deaths, and Marriages office. You will need:

• Your current Birth Certificate (again).
• The declaration from the Family Court.
• The fees for filing the application and issuing a certificate ($66 in 1999).
• A BDM65 form, which they will supply.

The BDM65 form asks you to supply the name you want to appear on your new birth certificate. If you are considering changing your surname, bear in mind that your birth certificate shows your parents' names, and people are likely to be curious as to why your name is different from theirs. I would suggest changing your surname in a seperate step after your sex designation has been corrected.

The Births, Deaths, and Marriages application also takes a couple of weeks or so to be processed. The new certificate will display your nominated name at the top and your correct sex designation, with no mention of the previously recorded details. However, the code number on the certificate does indicate that there is additional information on file (it's not clear if this is a pattern in the code visible to anyone who knows what to look for, or something that only shows up in the computer records). The old details are not freely available, but can be accessed under some circumstances.

The situation for people who cannot have surgery is ambiguous. If you are lucky, it may be possible to get away with letters saying that your body has been corrected as far as possible in your personal circumstances, but don't count on it. The requirement for surgery to have been carried out is a particularly significant issue for men with Benjamin's Syndrome, as the surgical techniques for men are riskier and less effective. Possibly a mastectomy would be considered sufficient, but it probably depends very much on the attitude of the individual staff member who handles the application.

The law specifically prohibits correction to the Birth Certificate if you are currently married, to prevent legal same-sex marriages... it does not appear to concern them that the legal same-sex marriage already exists. Both parties to the marriage would as single individuals be accepted as being of the same gender, and refusing to officially acknowledge the gender of one of the spouses does not change the reality of the situation. But though far from ideal, it is at least preferable to automatic invalidation of the marriage after surgery.

External Links

• Births, Deaths, and Marriages - the government department responsible for recording name and sex designation.
• Department for Courts