Edwina The only time a Certified copy a certificate is needed is when it is being used in a court or for some other legal purpose. For general genealogical purposes, a photocopy of a BDM certificate is fine. Also, the LDS are now digitising their microfilm collection and putting scans of original records on their website for free. Are you suggesting that to validate our genealogies we should then get our copies of those scans certified as true copies by a JP etc? regards David Armstrong Maylands, Western Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: Edwina Dorset To: 'Pat Stanistreet' ; [email protected] Sent: Friday, June 22, 2012 1:46 PM Subject: Re: [ENG-LIV] Petition re cost of BMD certificates (England & Wales) Hello Pat To the individual historian in each family, I ask you to think about this... 'Uncertified' Copies of Certificates??? I agree that the cost of Certificates for Research is very high and costly, but are we losing sight here that we have to VALIDATE our research, and be able to PROVE that the person we have found through research is who we think they are!!! Edwina