Do I need my daughters fathers permission to take her abroad?

[LKJS2015]

Hi,

I am thinking of taking my daughter abroad in the next month but I am no longer with her father (we wasn't married, my daughter has his surname and he is on the birth certificate). We previously had a personal arrangement between ourselves where he'd look after her and spend time with her every other weekend. However, over the past couple of months (Since the beginning of November 2019) things have been a bit explosive between me and her father to which he became verbally abusive (telling me to go die and he wishes he never gave me the satisfaction of having his child etc.) so recently I cut all forms of contact. He also stated he will be moving away and having no contact with myself or his daughter. Do I need to ask his permission to take my daughter abroad? If so I am 100% sure he will say no and probably be verbally abusive again. If I had to ask and he was to say no, how would I go about taking her abroad.

Unless you have a residency order or a child arrangement order you will need written permission. You can go to court to obtain this if he won't give it.

I have a different surname to my dds, when I took them abroad last year by myself no one questioned me. Their father and I sear still together, but he wasn’t with us, so they wouldn’t have known that.

My friend we were travelling with also has a different surname to her dd. Her and her dds dad have very little contact and certainly didn’t give permission, they also weren’t questioned at all.

I can’t say it’ll definitely be fine. Technically they can question you, we both knew that if it happened and they contacted their fathers there would be no objection, so it might be better to have permission just in case, but chances are that no one will even ask.