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Sunday, March 14, 2010

17) Franking the Deed of Adoption


If your RIPA's lawyer acts quickly, he can prepare the Deed of Adoption for you immediately after he receives a copy of the Court Order allowing the adoption.

To complete the adoption and make it official, you now need to execute and register the Deed of Adoption with the city registrar. Prior to doing this, you need to pay stamp duty for the document. If your lawyer has already prepared the Deed of Adoption on a Rs. 200 non-judicial stamp paper, then you have nothing to do.

Usually though, he would have simply typed it out on plain white/green paper and left a big empty space at the top of the first page for you to affix a Rs. 200 stamp. After the Telgi stamp paper scandal, most banks are not authorized to sell non-judicial stamps anymore and the easier option is to get your document franked instead.

Franking an already typed document on plain paper is equivalent to typing out the document on stamp paper. You fill in a franking deposit slip at the bank, pay the stamp duty and the officer uses a franking machine to print out the stamp denomination on the document. Again not all banks and branches provide a franking facility - branches of co-operative banks usually do - call them up ahead to check. I got my Deed of Adoption franked for Rs. 200 (+ Rs. 10 service charge) at the Kapol Cooperative Bank in Ghatkopar.

*Important*: Please retain your copy of the Franking Deposit Slip (basically the receipt you get from the bank). You will need to paste this into the blank space that your lawyer has hopefully left for you at the top of the first page of the Deed. The registrar's office will not accept the deed for execution if you don't have the franking receipt.

*) What the franked cover page of the Deed of Adoption looks like:

* Click on the image to enlarge

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