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Changing a childs surname

4 replies

rhi220595 · 29/07/2019 20:42

It will soon be 3 years since my ex saw our child or had any contact with the child and I want to change our childs surname to my family name. I don't want to contact him directly myself to ask him to sign so how do I go about contacting him to ask for permission? and if he doesn't give permission what are my next steps? Has anyone else been through this and if you don't mind sharing your outcomes that would be great?

Some basic background: I was not married to my childs father but he is on the birth certificate. We split when our child was 3 months old, he has not seen him since. there was a non molestation order in place and that is now a restraining order against him and there is also a c100 giving me residence and which he did not counter or even turn up to the hearing for. He has chosen no contact over the alternative of either going to court for contact or going to supervised contact centre, his family have also not reached out once to ask for any contact with the child, which I would have allowed.

OP posts:
SlowMoFuckingToes · 29/07/2019 20:44

As far as I know you can't change it without his consent if he has PR which it sounds like he does. I'm afraid you're stuck with that name.

Boneshere · 30/07/2019 00:27

You need permission. Best way is to email him or write and ask. If he says no then it will be a court order you will need to apply for. But that likely won't happen with only three years no contact and judges like to keep a link between non resident parent and child by keeping names. You could compromise on this by having two surnames or keeping the father's name as a middle name.

MissMalice · 30/07/2019 07:20

If you don’t want to contact him directly you could get a solicitor to write to him.

scaredaboutsurgery · 30/07/2019 08:16

Sounds very similar to my own situation. I applied for a CAO, a PSO and a SIO for a change of surname.

He didn't turn up, and wrote a rambling statement about how I was an awful terrible person and he didn't even think he was dd's father (😂 so not funny it's actually funny). So I was granted all of the orders, the name change was granted so that she now has his surname as an extra middle name (not double barrelled, and let's be honest, who actually uses their middle names?) and her surname is mine.

I do appreciate that name changes are extremely rare though.

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