The Junta Central Electoral, the court in charge of civil registration, ruled that the first birth certificate issued to a five-year-old boy living in Germany is not valid and that the second birth certificate is the valid one. Dominican Luz Maria Salas Sosa wed German Heinz Landolin Steinhauser (who died in February 1999) and together they declared her baby nephew as their child. This apparently is a common way to adopt a child in the DR without having to go through the legal procedures of adoption. Problems arose when Steinhauser died in Germany in February 1999, leaving a considerable inheritance. His biological son, Thomas Steinhauser, contested the right of the child to inherit 300,000 German marks left in his father’s will to Luz Maria Salas and the child Marcos, as per news reports. The JCE ruled that the valid birth certificate was the one registered in August 2000 by the boy’s biological parents, Dulce Maria Mesa and Domingo Salas. The mother and child face deportation from Germany.
