Access to child we have only just found out about

[numbcat]

I am looking for advice from anyone who may work in family law or who has been in a similar situation.

My partner and I recently received a letter from the CSA claiming he is the father of an eight year old girl. My partner had a one night stand with the girl's mother nine years ago and was unaware of the child's existence and was not named on the birth certificate.

He had a DNA test through the CSA which confirmed he is the father, and the CSA form has now been completed and posted so the financial side of things will shortly be taken care of. My partner's main concern is how to establish contact with the child. What are his legal rights to access and how can he make contact without causing the child and the mother unneccessary stress?

We have a young daughter together and would really like her to have some kind of relationship with her half-sister in the future. Any advice would be much appreciated.

The first step is to request contact. If the mother agrees, great! If not, it becomes a dispute. There are various methods of resolving the dispute. Mediation, Collaborative Law, and court process are the 3 main ones.

Thanks for replying. We don't have any contact details for them, can we request this from the csa?

If anyone has been in a similar situation is there a best way to make contact - email, letter, phone? What should my partner say? We don't even know if the child knows he exists :(

The only way to make contact then is to apply to court. He should complete a C100 (available from the HMCTS website) and issue it at his local county court (assuming it deals with family cases). It will cost £200. He should put "unknown" for the address details, and ask the court staff to put the file before a judge and ask that an order be made that the DWP (or whoever deals with child benefit) tells the court where they live. the court will then serve the application on the mother. That's the only way. The CSA will never give out personal information like that.

But the court will probably forward a letter with the form, so your husband can explain that he would like to resolve things directly and only used the court to make sure that he could get in contact. That would take the sting out of proceedings landing on the mother's doormat.

Agree with Bletchley. Perhaps the mother could be invited to indicate when acknowledging service whether she'd agree to mediation. That way you might even avoid going to court for the first hearing.

Thank you for the advice and sorry it's taken me so long to reply. The CSA payments have started and we will now try to get in touch with the mother. Thanks to both of you for responding, it's been a big help.