We recently received a search request from one of our readers:  Michelle.  She asked us to help search for her two birth children.  Her birth children were taken away by the State at a time when she was separated from her ex-husband.  She provided us with the names of her birth children, their dates of birth, and last known city and state they resided.  She does not know if her birth children were adopted out.   

Because of privacy concerns, we will only provide her birth children’s years of birth and their first names:  Jimmy and Charlotte born 1990 and 1992 respectively.  

We tried to email Michelle the following information, but the email address she provided was no good.  We hope she reads this post.

“Dear Michelle: Thanks for sending us your search request.  Our research department conducted a nationwide search for Jimmy and Charlotte based on the names and dates of birth that you provided.  Not surprisingly, we did not find any viable matches.  Let us explain…

Our research staff has access to state-of-the-art databases containing millions of public and non-public records such as, property records, credit header records, driver’s records, voter registration records, etc.  Because of the current ages of your birth children, they are not appearing in any of our database search results.   Here’s why…

Typically, people begin to appear in our databases when they reach approximately the age of 21.  By that age, they may have had time to obtain a driver’s license, purchase a car, rent an apartment, register to vote, and develop some credit history.  Then, a name and date of birth is typically enough for us to find someone fairly quickly.  Unfortunately, your birth children are now only 17 and 16 years old.  Also, if your children were adopted, they had a name change.  A search for an adoptee involves uncovering a current adopted name.  If we go through the extensive process of determining the current names of your birth children, they are likely, once again,  too young for our research department to find them.

Lastly, if we obtain the adopted names, get extremely lucky and one or both of your birth children appear in our database search results, we can’t provide you their address information without first contacting the adopting parents or legal guardian to receive permission.  Because of the young ages of your birth children, chances aren’t so good  we could enlist their cooperation.

So, this may be hard for you, but we suggest you wait until your birth children are older before you initiate a search with us or another company.  You’ll have a very good chance of find them then, and you will be able to contact them directly.  We are sorry we can’t do more for you at this time.

Best regards,

TheSearchAdvisor.com / OmniTrace.com   Research Department”

Please leave us any comments or questions you may have about this post.