The Supreme Court had two rulings on this. In the 2007 case of Rommel Silverio, who was born a male and now wants to change his birth certificate entry into “female” after undergoing a sex reassignment surgery, so that he could marry. The SC held that his petition could not be granted since “there is no such special law in the Philippines governing sex reassignment and its effects.”
However, the SC approved the 2008 petition of Jennifer Cagandahan, who was born female but wants to change her sex to male and her name to Jeff after developing male attributes as she grew older. Apparently, Cagandahan was suffering from a very rare condition known as Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia or CAH and there was no intervention at all.
But if your problem merely involves a minor change in your name or other entries in your birth certificate, then there is no need to get your name in the annals of the SC, since that can be corrected by the Office of the Civil Registrar.
“No one realizes the importance of making sure that his or her birth certificate has all the correct entries until such time the document is already badly needed either for a board exam or employment,” local civil registrar Atty. Leo Braceros said.
No less than Braceros can attest to this, after he was required to get a certified copy of his birth certificate from the National Statistics Office and found out that he had no name in the document except “Baby Boy Braceros”. This is funny considering that he was already able to take the Bar prior to the NSO certification requirement and had no idea that his birth certificate did not have the proper entries.
February is Civil Registration Month with the theme “Wastong Rehistro, Lahat Panalo”, and the agency is urging every Dabawenyo to ensure that the entries in their birth certificates are correct.
Braceros said minor changes in the birth certificate like the correction of the first name can be corrected just by going to the office of the Civil Registrar and paying the proper fees.
Under Republic Act 9048 which was signed into law by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in March 2001, the LCR is authorized to correct a clerical or typographical error in an entry, or even change the first name or nickname of a person even without judicial order. Substantial changes in the entries like a person’s gender, cannot be corrected solely by the LCR, but it needs a judicial order.
Braceros said they have noticed a decrease in request for petitions to change or correct the birth certificates in the city the past two consecutive years. This is attributed to the orientation and information campaign conducted by their office to clinics and hospitals.
It is important to register the correct entries in the birth certificates if you want to avoid delay in the future as well as the cost of corrections. A mere correction of clerical error will cost you P1,000 while the change of name will cost you P3,000.
Changing or correcting your name in your birth certificate is an individual responsibility, so, better head for the LCR office at the Sangguniang Panglunsod building. Unless you need to have your sex changed from male to female or vice versa. Then you need to get a lawyer. [Lovely A. Carillo]
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