On the morning of April 11, continuing the First Session, the 16th National Assembly discussed in the hall about the draft Law on Civil Status (amended).
Delegate Nguyen Truong Giang (Lam Dong Delegation) said that Article 7, Clause 2 stipulates that the Chairman of the Commune People's Committee has the right to sign civil status documents. Based on reality, the Chairman of the Commune People's Committee authorizes the signing of civil status documents except for birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates.
The delegate wondered how important papers such as birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage certificates are that cannot be authorized.
Especially with the death certificate, delegate Nguyen Truong Giang analyzed that a deceased person needs a death certificate to carry out burial procedures. How to handle not authorizing the Chairman of the Commune People's Committee when this person is busy attending a meeting?
The delegate added that birth certificates can also be waited for, but other papers must be needed immediately. Therefore, the delegate proposed to flexibly regulate the above to create conditions for people.
Delegate Tran Nhat Minh (Nghe An Delegation) contributed opinions on the content of adding marital status to civil status registration as stipulated in point e, clause 1, Article 3 on the content of civil status registration.
The delegate proposed not to stipulate this content because the marital status of individuals has basically been recorded and integrated into the civil status database, uniformly used nationwide. This is also the opinion stated in the thẩm tra report of the National Assembly's Law and Justice Committee.
According to the explanation of the drafting agency, the essence of confirming marital status is that the civil registration agency performs the marriage confirmation of an individual to issue a written confirmation upon request.
In practice today, this is a type of document to provide personal information to ensure the performance of some civil transactions with civil status registration.
According to Decree No. 123/2015/ND-CP of the Government detailing a number of articles and measures to implement the Law on Civil Status Registration, a certificate of marital status is only valid for 6 months from the date of issuance, with only one purpose of use recorded in the certificate.
Therefore, legally, it will not have the value of determining personal status and will not have long-term use value, even accompanying individuals throughout their lives like other types of civil status documents such as birth certificates, marriage registration certificates or other personal identification documents.
Information about marital status such as marriage and divorce can be exploited through the civil status database system according to the provisions of Article 8 of the draft law on the principles of civil status registration, exploitation, and sharing of civil status data.
From there, the delegate proposed not to stipulate the content of civil status registration regarding marital status information in the draft law to ensure the consistency of the law and reduce administrative procedures in civil status registration, creating favorable conditions for people in civil transactions, and reducing work pressure for grassroots officials.
Regarding death registration, the draft stipulates the registration of death with additional types of documents proving information about death events (time of death; place of death; cause of death (if any); documents proving death events) which are still unclear, general, and do not clearly state the legality of this type of document issued by which competent authority.
Moreover, if this regulation exists, is it appropriate for cases where people die at home due to illness, old age... without or without the confirmation of a competent authority.
Therefore, it is proposed that the drafting agency clarify this regulation to avoid people having to provide unnecessary papers, causing difficulties and troubles for establishments and people when carrying out death registration. The drafting agency needs to amend it in an open direction with this regulation.
