American Samoa

Ten years ago dozens of Amerian Samoan children were trafficked to the US and other counties through Focus on Children adoption agency and it is unclear if current records access laws were in place at that time. We are still researching.

Records access

Registrar of Vital Statistics has no authority to issue corrected birth certificate under present statute.Utu v. Beebe, 4 A.S.R. 762.
Where a person has exhausted all administrative remedies available to correct birth certificate and where failure to correct certificate would serve to damage to do damage to child named therein, court will invoke equity powers to instruct Registrar of Vital Statistics to issue corrected birth certificate.Utu v. Beebe, 4 A.S.R. 762
Court will deny petition to change name of child to that of deceased husband of mother when child is only eight years old but such dismissal shall be without prejudice to bringing of petition at later time when child is of sufficient age to understand nature of proceedings.In Re Sikalea, 4 A.S.R. 755.

In the absence of statutory abrogation of the common-law right to change one’s name, courts should encourage petitions to make a public record of these changes and so abuse their discretion in denying such petitions without any substantial reason.Application of Mamea, 24 A.S.R.2d 66

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