Reregistering birth after marriage

evi3000

Have 2 kids both born before we got married. Keep reading that we need to reregister the births. Why would we need to do this?
The kids have Husbands surname, he is their biological father, I have no intention of changing my surname to his. The children were born after 2003 and husband was with me to register his details as the father so he has parental responsibility.
So, do we need to get the kids reregistered?

Thanks!

peachyprice

I'd love to know too! We haven't re-registered our DD, we were married in 2004

MrsBartolozzi

My eldest is 19 on Sunday and he was born before we got married (has his dad's surname and name on cert). It has never come up at all that he should have been re-registered. As far as I know there is no such thing as illegitimacy these days so I would see no need for this. where did you read about re-registering children after their parents marry?

Moomum

If you have more children during your marriage they will have more rights than the children that you had before you were married. This is what we were told when registering DD last year.

evansmummy

Surely if you now husband is already on the birth certificate you don't need to re-register. The only reason would be if he wasn't on there already right? Or am I missing something?

MrsBartolozzi

Well, I was intrigued and had a google.
According to this parents are REQUIRED :eek:to reregister their children's birth after they get married (if both are the birth parents) BUT this is only if they live in England or Wales and the child was born in England or Wales.

Doesn't apply to me then, as DS was born in and we live in Scotland.

moodydonkey

It may be due to parental responsibility. I THINK, note that is THINK it is now recognised that unmarried parents have equal responsibility for their children whereas in the past it wasn't so. Stil makes no sense as i've typed it but think it may have something to do with that. Apologies if what i just said is complete bunkum.

Tigsteroonie

First I've heard of it, but a quick Google brought up this on the direct.gov website:

The natural parents have married each other since the birth

If the natural parents have married each other since the birth, they need to re-register the birth so that a new birth record can be created showing the child as a child of the parents’ marriage.
In these circumstances, you need to complete an ‘Application for re-registration following parents’ marriage’ form.

Wow.

eta. And checking around, many councils do mention it on their websites - but there's no sign of it on Manchester City Council's site (our area).

madtrekker

Yes we had to do this too. It's to protect the child(ren) born before your marriage and ensure they're equally eligible for any inheritance should you go on to have more children after you marry. The law is very old fashioned and even if both names are on the marriage certificate, the child is not considered a "child of your marriage" unless you re-register the birth after you marry. Therefore any subsquent children that are recognised as children of your marriage would have a greater claim to any inheritance.

It's not very well publicised and when we first registered DD, even though it came up in general conversation that we were to marry later that year, the registrar didn't mention anything about us having to re-register the birth. It was the registrar who married us that told us we'd need to do it.

evi3000

He has parental responsibility as he appears on their birth certificate and they were born after 2003.
Thanks to mrsbartolozzi's link it appears we have to reregister to comply with the legitimacy act 1976 (but only if we live in England or Wales - which we don't although the kids were born in London and we will move back eventually. As we're currently not resident in the UK I don't think we'll bother but will get round to it when we move back in a few years). That should save some money on anew long birth certificate for both the kids!

evi3000

We will not be having anymore kids!
I think we'll get them reregistered when we move back to the UK