Hey,
I am just looking for any people with experience of changing a child's surname through the courts. I have recently filled in the court paperwork to ask for my sons surname to be changed and have received the date for the First Hearing and Dispute Resolution Appointment.
Background- originally I registered my son without his father and in my surname, at the time of his birth we had split up due to a few incidents of domestic violence during early relationship/pregnancy. A few months after having my son I reached out to him (mainly due to baby blues/postnatal depression, feeling I had little support network and feeling that maybe with the break and us separated he deserved the chance of be a father to our son). Very quickly he got into my head, making me feel he had changed and to give a relationship another chance with regrettably I did.
As you can all probably guess nothing had changed with him and the violence both physical and emotional soon started again. In that time he made threats that if I didn't put him on our son's birth certificate and give our son his surname he would kill me and my children. Due to fearing for our safety I re-registered our son put him on the birth certificate and gave him his surname.
Moving on 12 years later our son has not had contact with him for around 10½ years. Court orders were placed for our safety. He is deemed that unsafe and a risk to women and children by professionals such as police, probation services, social services etc. If any woman with children get into a relationship with him, social services should be informed. In the years since our relationship pretty much every relationship of his has been abusive towards his partners, children of his have been taken away for their safety.
In the years since I've always used his legal surname on such official documents like passport school etc however we have called him by known name as my surname that to him he only knows himself by that name. However as he has got older he now has noticed legal documents such as passport etc being in a different surname and I've had to sit down and explain it to him to which he asked if I was able to change his surname.
Now a court date has been set I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually going to be successful as all I've read is that courts don't usually like to remove a surname from a child. So I'm here looking for stories where people have been successful. Will the views of a 12 year old be taken into account? Will the no contact of 10½ years be viewed as he has no links to his father/his family or the surname and he has more links/more identity to my surname due to family and friends calling him by that name for many years that he doesn't associate himself to his legal surname. I'm unsure of his whereabouts, contact details etc that I presume the courts try to find him to notify him of court proceedings but if they weren't able to find him/he chose not to attend would that work in my favour that he chose not to attend to object?
I've read sometimes to be more successful courts won't deny double barrelling a surname instead of fully removing a fathers and at a stretch I could agree to that if needs be, I've also read of circumstances the fathers surname as been placed as a middle name and mother's name given as last name which I would be more happy about then double barrelled. But I'm interested in if any one does have any success stories to in fully removing fathers surname and changing it to theirs just so I know if I would be wasting my time trying to convince the courts if my best options would be to either double barrel it or have his current surname as a middle name.
Sorry for the long read I look forward to reading any replies.