Apostille; A What?

O.K., here we are again, trying to figure out what we are doing!!! It turns out that back in 1961 there was this thing called the Hague Convention, I guess this was to make life difficult for those of us who decide to wander outside of our own country. Because of this Hague Convention, we will have some legal paperwork hoops to jump through in order to be legally admitted into Belgium. We have to have our documents such as our marriage license, and birth certificates and I would imagine Stig's immigration papers "legalised" which means that we must obtain an "Apostille". Never heard of that before? Me either! I am hoping that the relo company that we are working with is going to handle all the logistics of getting this taken care of for us, but I have my doubts/fears that I might have to take care of it myself. Thankfully, I do have all of this paperwork nicely organized in sheet protectors in a 3 ring folder. Yes, I know it is amazing that I am organized with that stuff, but I have had to dig for such items in the past and learned from experience. Anyway, the biggest problem that we can see with this process is that the Apostille must be issued by the state that the document originated in. Great, we were all five born in a different place. Stig was not even born in the U.S.! He was born in Denmark, I was born in Missouri at a closed military hospital, Elena was born in Rochester NY, Adriana in Bristol TN and Isabella in Indianapolis IN. At least we were also married in Indianapolis, so at least that is two legal docs in the same place. Stig's immigration was final when his family lived in Iowa. It's not like the US is a small country, I know we can probably do all of this via mail, but that scares us too. We don't really like the idea of sending off our original legal documents. So as you can see, I am a bit stressed about all of this paperwork.

One website actually says, that if you are moving to Belgium, prepare yourself for the paperwork NIGHTMARE!!! I am just praying that Glaxo Smith-Kline and their "people" will actually be the ones to navigate through this "paperwork nightmare".