How to Find Siblings After Adoption

There comes a time after your adoption that you may want to be reunited with your biological siblings. Siblings are an important part of your life and it's purely natural to want to know who your siblings are. Finding lost siblings after adoption can be rewarding.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Search public records and organization directories to try to locate your siblings. Go to the city or county in which you believe your siblings were born and purchase copies of their birth certificates from the birth certificate office. Birth certificates can offer information like their full names and can prove who the parents were. Search anything and everything with the names of your siblings to try to find them.

2. Search court records in the cities and counties where you believe your siblings may have lived. This can usually be done online and for free. Just search for the clerk of courts offices in the places where you believe your siblings may be living or may have been living. Focus your search on areas where you believe your siblings might be.

3. Speak with your birth parents and/or adoptive parents. They may be able to help you locate your lost siblings.

4. Browse MySpace and Facebook. These types of sites are great places to look because many people have profiles on them and they are simple to search. You can click on "search by name" and simply type in the names of your siblings and a list of potential matches will pop up. You can then weed through the potential matches by scrolling through them and figuring out whether the people are the right ages and locations.

5. Ask around. Invest time and energy into getting out in the communities where you believe your siblings might live and visit coffeehouses and retail stores, asking whether anyone there might know them. Visit schools and churches. Eventually you're bound to get a break. Visit area schools and look at year books to obtain photos of your siblings. You can then use the photos to search online or print pamphlets to help with your search.

Resources

• Look for siblings on Facebook.
• Browse MySpace.

[cmheintz]

on 9/8/2008 My cousins have told me that another child was born to my parents and they think the child was adopted, but no one would talk about it. While my mother was still living I questioned her about it and she said it was silly and didn't know where the idea came from. We are all now in our 50's and my cousins insist there was another baby. If I went to my local city hall, could I request birth certificates for all children born to my parents? If the child were adopted, would a birth certificate with my parents names be public record?