Not baby names as such - re-register a child’s birth following marriage of natural parents

[DumbleDork]

Not a “baby” name as such but:

My 10 year old was born before my husband and I were married and we married when he was 4.

Friends of ours have just had their 2nd baby. Their first was born before marriage and the 2nd was born afterwards and said that when they registered their 2nd baby they were told they had to reregister their 1st to make them legally a “child of the parents marriage”.

This has me worried now as we wernt told this when we registered our 2nd who was born after we were married.

Is it an actual legal requirement or something that’s “nice” to do?

Also if we do reregister will my name and job have to change on his birth cert?

Thanks

Yes, it's a legal requirement, but I suspect only because no-one's got around to abolishing it yet.

You can be fined (England/Wales, possibly Scotland too,as it's pre-devolution, don't know about NI, expect it applies across all of UK)

I wonder why we weren’t told about this when our youngest was born 4 years ago then.

Do you have to pay for it, do you know?

Thanks

No, you don't pay.
You complete a form and send it to the register office where your child's birth was registered along with the marriage certificate.
Then one of you will need to attend an appointment to re-register the birth.
I thought that it didn't really matter (in day to day life) if you didn't do this but was recently speaking to a former judge who told me that intestacy laws in England will mean that children that are not from the marriage are treated differently to those that are.
I never knew that and I am happy to be corrected.

We were told about this when we registered our daughters couple of weeks ago. I had no idea! As my dp ex won’t sign the divorce papers, I can’t see us marrying just yet!

We got married when our daughter was six months old and when we registered her they told us we’d have to re register her once we were married.
We were also told, like pp, that intestacy laws mean she’ll be treated differently to any other children we have now we’re married.

When we registered our second I asked about this since our first was born before we married. They told us that technically we should do it, but when I asked if we should actually bother they said it didn't make any difference in reality.

I've just had to do this.... when we registered second baby we re-registered our first as now married. Just had to pay for new BCs. It is a legal requirement apparently and can affect things in the future with regard to inheritance I believe if one is registered child or marriage and one isn't

So if you had all your children before you got married to their father and have no children after the marriage it shouldn't make any difference to them?

I was born in the late 1950s, parents married mid 60s and was very surprised to discover when I started doing family history research that I had two birth certificate entries, as did my 5 siblings who were also born before the wedding. Skeletons in the closet!

When I got married they told me about it but I very much got the impression it's not overly important. I didn't do it in the end (really busy and just didn't make time for it)) ashe registrar seemed to think nothing would really happen either way.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, just that I wouldn't lose any sleep over it

Actually it's quite impotent if you have some children born before marriage and some after as they have different inheritance rights. Those born when you weren't married have fewer rights than the others and are on a par with adopted children in the hierarchy