You are factually incorrect. I hope you are not giving out dubious legal advice to women on this group you are a member of. You clearly have very strong beliefs about what the rights & responsibilities of mothers vs fathers should be, but that you wish it to be so does not make it so.
The birth certificate is a legal document and, therefore, is required to be accurate (and therefore factual) unless there are compelling reasons why that is not the case. There are reasons it may not be fully completed- as the presence of the father is required at registration in order for him to be named if the parents are not married, for instance- but it cannot contain falsehoods- therefore it should be factual.
If the father was not present/named at the initial registration of the child’s birth, the parents can re-register the birth at a later date if they both agree.
If the mother will not agree to either the father being named on the birth certificate, or to him having parental responsibility (which he can get without being named on the birth certificate if both parties agree to it and a legal agreement is made), the father can absolutely can apply to the court to have a Declaration of Parentage granted, or to have Responsibility Order made. A Responsibility Order can be made where the child’s mother will not agree to the father bring granted parental responsibility. This does not automatically mean his name is added to the birth certificate. The mother cannot prevent him making either of these applications, though she can contest them. The court will have expected the father to have asked the mother to agree to re-register the birth with him named on the certificate- clear process for this. If she denies this request, he is then free to apply to the Court to seek to have the declaration made without her agreement.
If the court grants the Declaration of Parentage, the court will notify the Registry Office directly and the birth will be re-registered with his details on it. The mother cannot stop this once the declaration of parentage has been granted.
The court is unlikely to deny the application for Declaration of Parentage without good reason - because the principal is that it is the child’s certificate/information and not the mothers, and their best interests are paramount, not the mothers desired outcome. The general underlying reasoning is that it is usually in the child’s best interests to know- and have it in legal documentation- who their parents are, though the relevant legislation clearly recognises that this is not always the case and makes provision for that. But, the threshold for that is relatively high and the fact that the man in question may not have been supportive or have disappeared during the mothers pregnancy (and even the child’s earlier life) is usually not reason enough for the court to dismiss the application (even though it may make him a lousy individual).
As I said, there are reasons the court might deny the application to declare parentage or refuse to grant a Responsibility Order. These would include: if the father cannot prove paternity (e.g. he is using an unreliable DNA test to prove paternity and he refuses to agree to a court approved test). If the mother contests that he is the father, the court can demand a DNA test to establish paternity, if it feels that it is the child’s best interest that paternity is established, regardless of the mothers view; or if there is significant evidence that it is not in the child’s best interests to place the father on the birth certificate (e.g. if the parent is deemed to be a high risk to the child’s safety) the court may e
deny the application; if the court did not believe itself to have jurisdiction over the case (e.g. birth certificate not issued in this country) it can decline to proceed with the application; or, the application is made by someone other than the father (e.g. a grandparent).
The court is not going to refuse to grant the declaration order simply because the mother does not wish it, even in cases where she has been treated very shoddily by the father or where he has previously not shown much interest in the child. That is an issue to be dealt with when decisions about custody/contact are being established. If he has been absent from the child’s life for some time, any contact is almost certainly going to be supervised initially and only gradually increased over time- he isn’t going to get 50/50 custody immediately. And rightly so.
For a court to deny a declaration of parentage, there has to be a reason that is directly related to the child’s welfare, the mother’s wishes are not the highest priority in these matters. You work with women who may well have very good reason to believe their child might be put at risk by their father (or have evidence that the father has caused harm to the child)- the court would obviously want to look seriously at such concerns and if the court believed those claims substantiated they may refuse to issue the declaration of parentage. But that is relatively uncommon. If you work with women who have been victims of violence and abuse, it is not hard to imagine that your experience of such cases is somewhat skewed- they do have reason that the court would recognise as a good basis to object to the declaration being made. Therefore, the court is more likely to reject these applications than on average. But it is highly inaccurate to claim that a father cannot apply to Jace the certificate changed, or that the courts rarely grant applications that are made.
I understand the reasoning behind the wish to leave paternity off their child’s birth certificate (obviously some will not have been able to initially if the father refused to attend the registration)- but I do believe the principal of children knowing who their parents are is correct, unless there is very good evidence that doing so places the child at risk. Mums feelings towards the father are, in the legal sense, not relevant and nor should they be. It is about the child’s rights and best interests.