Birth reregistration

[Staceyje]

Hello

Looking for some advice/support.
we got married in 2015 and had two children before we married and had one child after marriage.

I’ve been advised that I will need to re-register my two children born before marriage so that they become a child of marriage and all 3 children will then have equal rights of intestacy in the future.

My question is has anyone who had children done this? Would you advise/recommend I do. I have checked the gov website and it appears to be a legal requirement.

its free to do and seems straightforward but my two reservations are:
my eldest is 10 years old and therefore the date of registration on his birth certificate would be 10 years after he was born
it somehow feels like im messing up their birth record with a date some 10 and 8 years after they were born, is this something that they might have an issue or questions about in the future?

Any experiences of people who have re registered their children would be much appreciated 👍🏻

@Needmorelego thanks for this, my occupation and address have both changed since 10 years ago so I’ll probably have to put the most recent. Good to hear others have done this too

@Staceyje we only found out because when we went to get our marriage licence we took our daughter with us. The registrar asked "does she belong to both you" (😂)and when we said yes she told us about it.
She actually said "it's one of those strange old fashioned things".
If we hadn't taken our daughter with us they wouldn't have known we had a child and we wouldn't have been told so I doubt I would have ever heard about it.

@Staceyje I'm the only person I know IRL who has ever reregistered a birth. Everyone else was either married already when they had kids or they gave their kids their boyfriends surname from the off so haven't bothered for that reason. I never knew of the legal requirement part of it til I read it on here a month or so back.

The only reason I re-registered DD was so that she would be listed with her new surname.

However, I am from an old fashioned family so would have wanted her re registered if id given her my boyfriends surname when she was born, but that's just me.

@Dacadactyl mine already have my husbands surname on their original registration but I think I’ll go ahead and re-register anyway for the same reasons 😉

We did this. I’m surprised people don’t know about it because we were told when we registered DD the first time that we would need to re-register her if we got married. Maybe other areas aren’t as proactive at letting people know, or people just forget they were told it!

DD had my partner’s surname from the start so really the only thing that changed on her birth certificate is my surname as I took my partner’s surname on marriage. Our occupations had also changed so they’re updated on the new certificate.

I’ve still got her original birth certificate but as far as I can remember we’ve just used the replacement one when asked to show it anywhere and it’s never been a problem.

Seems really pointless

@plumduck it does seem mostly pointless but there might be some times in the cases of inheritance and being someone's heir.
For example if Prince William and Katherine hadn't been married when George was born he technically would have been illegitimate and wouldn't count as an heir to the throne. If they had then married but not re registered him and then Charlotte came along - she would be the legal heir instead.
By re registering George would then become legitimate.
Of course for Mr and Mrs Average Family this probably wouldn't be an issue 🤣🤣🤣
So yeah.... pointless.

No, George would have been automatically legitimated by marriage regardless of whether the birth was re-registered.

@prh47bridge oh would he? I didn't realise that.

@prh47bridge so it really is pointless 🤣

It’s a pointless exercise now. It used to be a thing because even when named on the birth certificate an unmarried father didn’t automatically have parental rights/responsibilities.

It had to be applied for, or was automatic on reregistration.

now that PR is automatic when on the BC it’s really irrelevant

We didn't bother - it really seemed totally pointless as nothing would be changed - including my name as I didn't take DHs, and kids were given both already. As it no longer has any effect on inheritance it seemed totally unnecessary. I never regarded my children as illegitimate either (even if I hadn't married dh)!

George is actually the best example of it being pointless. He still wouldn’t be the heir. It would change nothing for him, or Charlotte.

Agreed. Although he would be legitimated by his parents marrying regardless of whether the birth was reregistered, my understanding of the rules of succession (I am not a constitutional lawyer!) is that a child born out of wedlock cannot succeed to the throne even if the parents subsequently marry.

Yeah, only children born into marriage (in Williams case one approved by the monarch) can succeed.

Yes, we did it as DC1 was born before we were married and DC2 afterwards. We actually reregistered DC1 2 months after our wedding, before DC2 was even conceived.
We kept the original birth certificate for DC1 so they have two.

@marmaladegranny thanks for the reply. I agree, i think I’d seen somewhere that someone was registered 3 times.. once at birth, reregistered following marriage of parents and then again 5 years later when re-registered again to correct an issue with the mothers maiden name as the mum had passport issues, I guess it happens!

That’s a nice idea to keep the original too

OP I would advise you to check your will as well (assuming you have one written before your marriage!). Unless your will was specifically written in anticipation if your marriage, it will have been invalidated by your marriage. This can have far more serious consequences than not reregistering your dc's birth.

My elder DD was born in the 1990s, this was before DH and I were married. The registrar did tell us that if we married we would have to reregister the birth.

We were given the short form birth cert which I think is now obsolete and DH re registered her when we married a few months later.

Our DS was born 13 years ago, given DH surname, I wasn't yet divorced from my Ex. A couple of years later I took DH surname by Deed Poll and a few years after that, we got married. I know about re-registration but haven't bothered as it makes absolutely no difference, it's an archaic law.

Old thread, but adding that we were advised by the registrar to reregister the birth of our children to give them the same inheritance rights in case our marriage broke down and we remarried, with children resulting of these new marriages. These children would then inherit the estate rather than the "illegitimate children", who would still have rights to inherit, but secondary to the "married" half siblings.
This is the reason the old law still exists.

The registrar was talking rubbish. Illegitimate children have the same rights to inherit as legitimate children (Family Law Reform Act 1987) and are, in any case, legitimated by marriage, not be re-registration (Legitimacy Act 1976). Failure to re-register the birth does not affect the fact that the child has been legitimated by marriage (Legitimacy Act 1976 Section 9(2)).

Registrars are not legally trained.