Does anyone know anyone or have experience with making corrections on koseki birth registries, while being overseas?
I am a former Japanese national (now US naturalized citizen, Japan citizenship renounced) and my wife is a Japanese national. We live in Seattle. My wife is a green card holder. Our marriage was in Japan. Due to this situation our koseki is actually based on my wife as the head of household. The koseki is based in Fukuoka (out of convenience, it’s where my in-laws live).
Our daughter was born in the US this April. We went through filing a birth registry (出生届) through the Seattle Japanese consulate office. It’s now about 2-3 weeks later. Unfortunately my wife just realized a few days ago that we got our daughter’s **kanji wrong!**
It’s only one character, and to give her some slack, it’s a pretty confusing kanji. But she feels *really really dumb* about it and it’ll have to be amended*.* Anyways, we contacted the consulate immediately, who replied back after researching to tell us that it’s quite complicated now.
Apparently we will have to take it up with the Japanese Family Courts (家庭裁判所).
[https://www.courts.go.jp/saiban/syurui/syurui\_kazi/kazi\_06\_20/index.html](https://www.courts.go.jp/saiban/syurui/syurui_kazi/kazi_06_20/index.html)
The process isn’t too difficult, but it requires being there, mailing things, and so forth. So they suggest… a lawyer. Oof. Between paying close to 3 grand for us to go to Japan to do this paperwork, and paying a lawyer to do it, a lawyer is obviously better… But any ideas? Any alternatives you can think of, or do you have lawyers you recommend for this kind of stuff?
Thanks in advance, this is a big headache.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/14gf5ab/anyone_have_experience_with_a_family_court_for/
3 comments
You may be able to get it done with a 司法書士 (“judicial scrivener”), which would be much cheaper.
This is not helpful but it reminded me of a similar story. I heard once of a Japanese guy who was living in the UK and he went to register the birth of his second son. While at the town office he was distracted by the first son and wrote down the name of the first son on the paper. When he got home he showed his wife the birth-certificate and she realised his mistake. He went back to the office to correct it but they said that he couldn’t change it unless he had proof from Japan, officially translated into English that showed that is first son had the same name. It also was a big pain in the ass to fix.
My god reading that Kanji reminds me of the absurd family origin registration system in China (CN) lol