Restricting rights of son's father - how?

maman

Cheeseface wrote: »

No they don’t. The school information management systems have a section for ‘legal’ surname and ‘known’ surname.

Obviously the school you mention still has the child's 'real' name on record. I think the reason for that is so that children cant get 'lost'.

In my experience some schools (obviously I'm not familiar with all schools) will not accept a name change without documentation as they don't want to get caught between parents. It's not for a school to take sides.

badmemory

Why do you need to restrict the rights of your son's father? He would appear to have restricted his own rights. Will he know if you take him to some spainish island for a week next summer? Will he care?

The basic rules for relationship break-up when you have a child are - don't badmouth the father in the child's hearing, don't allow other people to do it either. This is not so the child doesn't know what a s*** their father is, it is so that when that child just does one thing (and it can be very minor) wrong that child does not decide that they must be a really horrible person because they are turning out just like their father. They are after all 50% their father, well unless you lied about their parentage.

sulkisu

I don't know the answer to the question of how you go about removing his parental rights, but for all those who are asking why she might want to etc, one reason would be if (God forbid), something were to happen to the mother, there is nothing to stop the biological father coming back and removing his son from the home. Through my work, I know of at least one situation where this happened - the woman in question married a successful older man. She passed away suddenly and her ex-partner who had not seen their children for years, came back to claim them. His wife had left everything that she had to her children, so a windfall for him. He had no interest in the children until they were rich (even though the money was in trust, it could be used for their benefit -
to buy a house for example). Shortly afterwards, he left the country with the kids, his girlfriend and their children - and sadly refused contact from her family (the children's maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, step-father). There was nothing that they could do, they had no legal rights

fabforty

sulkisu wrote: »

I don't know the answer to the question of how you go about removing his parental rights, but for all those who are asking why she might want to etc, one reason would be if (God forbid), something were to happen to the mother, there is nothing to stop the biological father coming back and removing his son from the home. Through my work, I know of at least one situation where this happened - the woman in question married a successful older man. She passed away suddenly and her ex-partner who had not seen their children for years, came back to claim them. His wife had left everything that she had to her children, so a windfall for him. He had no interest in the children until they were rich (even though the money was in trust, it could be used for their benefit -
to buy a house for example). Shortly afterwards, he left the country with the kids, his girlfriend and their children - and sadly refused contact from her family (the children's maternal grandparents, aunts, uncles, step-father). There was nothing that they could do, they had no legal rights

That must have been awful for all concerned - how sad, but illustrates why things sometimes have to be formal and legal.

peachyprice

maman wrote: »

Obviously the school you mention still has the child's 'real' name on record. I think the reason for that is so that children cant get 'lost'.

In my experience some schools (obviously I'm not familiar with all schools) will not accept a name change without documentation as they don't want to get caught between parents. It's not for a school to take sides.

It may be down to each LEA, certainly here in my county all schools my children have been to have allowed 'known as' names.

Cheeseface

maman wrote: »

Obviously the school you mention still has the child's 'real' name on record. I think the reason for that is so that children cant get 'lost'.

In my experience some schools (obviously I'm not familiar with all schools) will not accept a name change without documentation as they don't want to get caught between parents. It's not for a school to take sides.

peachyprice wrote: »

It may be down to each LEA, certainly here in my county all schools my children have been to have allowed 'known as' names.

I don’t know about all schools either, but in my experience we accept a name change to a ‘known as’ without any documentation. All their previous names will be recorded on our central systems and paper documentation. I don’t understand the comment about getting lost though.

We don’t take sides obviously but we will accept this from a parent with parental consent. School staff can use common sense and judge each situation within guidelines.

In the OPs case, the father hasn’t been around since the child was 3 so the school wouldn’t know him. If he turned up at the school to collect him, we wouldn’t let the child go. Also mum said that she wanted the child to be known as a new surname, we would ask for it in writing and just change it on the systems to ‘known as’ . The child’s registered surname stays on the systems too.

GwylimT

maman wrote: »

I'm surprised you could just change a child's name without going through a formal process. AFAIK school registers must match birth certificates unless there is other documentation.

Schools are not required to see birth certificate, they must use whichever name a guardian gives the school.

haras_nosirrah

I am also not sure why you need to do this. By trying to get him to withdraw his parental rights you may 'awaken the dragon' and prompt him to start taking an interest in your child.

See if it is possible to get some parental responsibility to your husband and get it so you can take him on holiday but I wouldn't take it any further than that.