Unfiltered Story #385537

This situation is officially resolved today so I can tell you about it! My mom managed to misplace or allow to expire almost all of her legal forms of identification:
* NH non-driver’s ID (too expired)
* social security card (lost)
* passport (far too expired)
* marriage license (original lost, church’s copy destroyed in a flood in the ’90s, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has no record anywhere, suggesting it was never properly submitted)
* even her birth certificate (no longer considered valid because it lacked information which is now considered required, but wasn’t in NJ in 1964)

The circular paperwork issues you face if you get into this fix are incredible! You need some kind of ID to request backup copies of any of your other kinds of ID, so if you have nothing, you can’t get anything. We were effectively faced with the prospect of having to steal her identity in order to give it back to her, and ever since 9/11, this has become quite difficult to do! She has been struggling for literally two years to get out of this fix and get a valid Texas ID.

The eventual solution to the impenetrable roadblock was to get one of her siblings (able to prove who THEY were to New Jersey’s satisfaction) to request a new copy of her birth certificate, with which she could get a new marriage license (I remarried them, it was very sweet). With this in hand, plus a small mountain of bank statements, utility bills, lease agreements, disability paperwork, tax forms (some including her SSN), and anything else we could find that had her name and address on it, plus a 5-hour round trip to the one DMV in central Texas that was taking appointments less than 4 months out, she was able to successfully apply for a new non-driver’s ID today! I’m considering throwing a party to welcome her back to official personhood. It really gives you a window into how difficult it is to be undocumented in the US!