Passport worries

[zoelikesjam]

Hey everyone.

Just a quickie, I need to renew my two eldest children's passports. They no longer have contact with their father. I have no contact with their father, but he still has parental responsibility. How do I go about getting their passports renewed when the passport office will request him to sign a letter? Which I know, even if we can contact him he will definitely refuse to do.

TIA

Zoe x

[cannotseeanend]

Why would IPS request the father to sign a letter?
Go on the website, download the form, pay bill, wait 2 weeks, passports arrive.
Unless there is a specific reason meaning you cannot do anything without a letter, I cannot see the problem.

My husband, senior UK civil servant, abandoned his kids. I don't wait for him to give consent for anything. I just renewed several of their passports and it's recorded that only 1 passport is allowed to be valid for all the kids, to prevent him also obtaining passports.

[dementedpixie]

I don't think they ask for a letter on a renewal. It just needs one person to sign the application

[zoelikesjam]

That is very goo to know, thank you!

My only confusion was that my youngest daughter has just had her passport renewed by her father, and I had to sign a form allowing it...

[titchy]

So you don't have your youngest child's passport? If you're not in contact how are going to use it? Was hers a first passport though? A renewal only needs one parents details so what did you sign?

[RightSideOfWrong]

I'm presuming OPs youngest child has a different father to the eldest children.

You shouldn't need a letter. Do you have a copy of what you signed? It might be that something was flagged up during the application that made permission from you necessary, but it would be relatively unusual.

[springalong]

As a separate note I asked the passport office about issuing duplicate passports. Took months to get a reply. I know adults who have duplicate British passports - apparently that is OK but they will not issue duplicate passports for a child. If parents have issues - back to court it goes.

[zoelikesjam]

Youngest's dad is different to my two eldest. He is my ex-husband who I get on very well with.
He is taking her away soon and needed to renew her passport. The passport office sent him a letter I had to sign.

[tribpot]

I'm pretty sure that when I renewed ds' passport I didn't need to get DH to sign anything (and we normally run into problems caused by me having a different surname to ds and DH).

I googled and came across this document, which looks rather odd as it doesn't say which government department it comes from. However, it says on page 6 it covers the circumstance where your consent was sought for an application from the father. (Albeit it says it's in cases where PR may be questioned).

A little further down it seems basically to say that as long as they are confident the applicant has PR for the child further consent won't be required.

Of course officially you will need your ex's consent to take the children out of the country anyway, but I appreciate this is impractical.