By HILLARY GUBLER
Genealogy research overcame a roadblock Friday in the Utah Senate when lawmakers voted to allow public access to adoption records after 100 years.
After more than 50 years of being closed to the public, adoption records will join all other birth records in Utah with the 100 year date.
Instead of paying for rare and expensive court orders, descendants will only have to pay for the price of copies, said sponsor Rep. David Zolman, R-Taylorsville.
Although Zolman has been a professional famliy historian for 25 years, he said this bill is a result of geneological problems reported by the state archives and was not a personal problem.
“Quite a few people had called me about it, but not from my district,” Zolman said. “It is more of a state wide interest.”
Zolman said about half of the nation already have access to adoption records.
“Geneology is one of the fastest growing interests in the country,” Zolman said. “There are more non-mormons than mormons doing geneology.”
Zolman said LDS influence has in fact slowed the process of making the records public because they are afraid of mixing church and state.
Zolman said he would not attempt to make the adoption records available in a shorter time period because 100 years is a nationwide standard.
“Over time, people who have come through adoptive lines will put their famliy histories together,” Zolman said.
State Archives Director Jeff Johnson said that before World War II, adoption records were open to the public because communities were closely knit and adoptions were seen as a solution for orphans.
However, when communities grew after World War II, people became sensitive to privacy concerning birth records, especially records dealing with illegitimate children and war babies, Johnson said.
Johnson said the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s family history center representatives pointed out the problems descendents of adoptees were having in trying to trace their biological ancestry.
“We’ve had a lot of support,” Johnson said. “There are a lot of researchers interested in this area.”
The LDS family history center representatives said they are hopeful it will help descendents, but it is too soon to tell what impact this bill will have on genealogy research.
Utah Valley Regional Family History Center representative, Jana Darrington, said the center sees people every once in a while looking for adoption record information, but because it hasn’t been accessible they haven’t been able to help them in their search.
“We usually send them to the Internet to search,” Darrington said.
Darrington said researchers want to know their biological family history, if only for genetics and medical reasons.
