Florida Birth Certificate Request

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-02

The document was derived directly from the Florida Department of Health's own published application form and instructions. It remains draft, not verified — see the honesty flags below for the specific ambiguities that keep it from verified.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): us/fl/doh/birth-certificate-request / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics ("FL DOH").
• "Birth Certificates" landing page: https://www.floridahealth.gov/certificates/certificates/birth/index.html — fetched live as raw HTML, 2026-07-02 (HTTP 200, no block). Supplied the eligible-requestor summary, the VitalChek third-party-vendor channel description (out of scope for this schema — see below), the fee schedule narrative, and the mail-in/walk-in/county-health-department ordering channels.
• DH 726, "Application for Florida Birth Certificate" (01/2022, Fla. Admin. Code R. 64V-1.0131): https://www.floridahealth.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/DH726-birth-app-6-30-2023.pdf — fetched live (HTTP 200), read directly as a PDF (both pages: the fillable application on page 1, the printed "Information and Instructions" reverse side on page 2). This is the authoritative field source: every field name/label in this schema is a direct transcription of a labelled blank on this form, and every numbered eligibility category, fee line, and acceptable-ID list comes from its reverse-side instructions.
• Field extraction method: direct PDF read (native multimodal rendering), not a summarized fetch — recovered the exact printed wording of every field label, fee line, and instructional paragraph on both pages, per gov-form-pdf-extraction discipline.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-02.
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

What was confirmed against the source

| Source element | Field(s) / documents[] entry | |---|---| | "ELIGIBILITY (Section 382.025, Florida Statutes)" numbered list 1-6 | requestorEligibilityCategory | | "a birth certificate marked 'Deceased' may be issued to registrant's spouse, child, grandchild, sibling" | deceasedRegistrantRelativeType | | "Applicant's Name: ___ (Person requesting the record)" | applicantFullName | | "Mailing Address: ___ Apt.#: ___", "City: ___ State: ___ ZIP Code: ___" | applicantMailingAddressLine1/2, applicantMailingAddressCity/State/PostalCode | | "Phone (with area code): ___ email: ___" | applicantPhone, applicantEmail | | "If applicant is an attorney, provide name of client you represent..." | isAttorneyRequestor, attorneyClientFullName, attorneyClientRelationshipToRegistrant, attorneyBarLicenseNumber | | "Full Name on Birth Record: ___" | registrantFullName | | "Sex: ___ Date of Birth: ___ City/County: ___" | registrantSex, registrantDateOfBirth, registrantBirthCityOrCounty | | "Mother's / Parent's Full Name Prior to First Marriage" / "Father's / Parent's..." | motherParentFullNameBeforeMarriage, fatherParentFullNameBeforeMarriage | | "Computer-Generated Certification of Birth" / "Photocopy-Generated Certificate of Live Birth" fee lines | certificationType, numberOfCertificationsRequested | | "Additional Years Searched: $2.00 per year (Required when exact year is unknown. Maximum fee is $50.00)" | additionalYearsSearchedQuantity | | "Rush Order (Optional): ... additional $10 fee" | rushServiceRequested | | "FEES: Check or Money Order Payable to: Vital Statistics. DO NOT SEND CASH." | paymentMethod, documents[].feePayment | | "APPLICANT'S VALID PHOTO IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED" / "ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF IDENTIFICATION: Driver License, State Identification Card, Passport, Military Identification Card" | documents[].applicantPhotoIdDocument | | "Legal Guardian (must provide guardianship papers)" | documents[].guardianshipPapersDocument | | "Legal representative ... (must provide documentation)" | documents[].legalRepresentativeDocumentationDocument | | "Other person(s) by court order (must provide certified copy of court order)" | documents[].courtOrderCopyDocument | | "notate 'Registrant Deceased' ... include a photocopy of the death certificate" | documents[].deathCertificateCopyDocument | | "the application must be accompanied with a notarized Affidavit to Release a Birth Certificate form (DH 1958) ... and a copy of valid photo identification of both" | documents[].dh1958AffidavitDocument, documents[].eligiblePersonPhotoIdDocument | | "Any person who willfully and knowingly provides any false information ... commits a felony of the third degree..." (paired with the "Signature: ___" line) | documents[].falseStatementAttestation |

Honesty flags (deliberate, recorded rather than glossed over)

• VitalChek's own online-order flow is out of scope. The landing page prominently offers "Order Online with VitalChek," but VitalChek is stated to be an "ONLY... approved" third-party contracted vendor, not the Department of Health's own system (the DH 726 form itself repeats the same warning: "VitalChek.com is the ONLY online vendor approved... Be cautious when sharing personal information online with unknown entities"). This schema models the Department's own DH 726 mail-in/walk-in application instead, consistent with the standard's scope (we schematize government processes, not a private vendor's proprietary intake flow).
• applicantEmail requiredness is ambiguous. The form prints "Phone (with area code): ___ email: ___" on one line with no asterisk or other marking distinguishing required from optional fields anywhere on the form. Modelled applicantPhone as required (a callback phone is referenced elsewhere in the Bureau's own assistance line) and applicantEmail as optional — a judgment call, not a confirmed rule, flagged here rather than guessed silently.
• registrantSex has no enumerated options on the source. Unlike some other schemas' sex/gender fields (e.g. us/ny/dmv/drivers-license-renewal's explicit "M / F / X"), the DH 726 prints only a blank line ("Sex: ___") with no printed option list. Modelled as free-text string rather than inventing an enum with unconfirmed values.
• The unknown/approximate-birth-year search mechanic is not structurally modelled. The source states the year-range search "(if unknown, specify range of years to be searched...)" is billed via the flat additionalYearsSearchedQuantity fee line, but the DH 726 form itself has no separate "year range start/end" input boxes — only the fee-quantity box. registrantDateOfBirth therefore models only the exact-date path; an applicant searching an unknown year is out of full structural scope for v1.0.0, the same kind of narrowing us/ca/dmv/real-id-application applied to its own unsourced SSN exception.
• No cross-field "different document type" or arithmetic-total rules are enforced. numberOfCertificationsRequested, additionalYearsSearchedQuantity, and rushServiceRequested each drive a computed dollar total on the form (base fee + $4/copy + $2/year + $10 rush + $1 shipping), but this schema does not model a computed "total amount enclosed" field — GovSchema documents collect applicant-supplied data, not derived monetary totals; the documents[].feePayment entry records the payment-method rule and notes which fields drive the variable total in prose instead.
• Spanish-language DH 726S and in-office identity verification are out of scope. The Bureau publishes a Spanish-translated DH 726S with identical fields (out of scope for this v1.0.0 English-language schema, consistent with process.language: en-US), and the walk-in counter's own in-person ID check is a service-delivery step, not an applicant-supplied data field.

Conformance

See conformance/us/fl/doh/birth-certificate-request/1.0.0/ for a mock, non-submitted request packet exercising the direct-registrant-eligible path.