family law - what difference does it make to be a "child of a marriage"?

[mummypig]

Dp and I are planning to get married, very quietly, and the registrar said we would have to re-register our children so they were each 'child of a marriage'. What difference does this really make?? They both have dp's surname and he already has parental responsibility for them as well as me, which were the only two things I thought might matter. I have looked on the 'married or not' website and others and although I found another reference saying children should be re-registered it didn't offer any explanation of why children should be 'child of a marriage' or an example of how they might be treated differently if not.

I am aware that English law is far from simple, and so dp and I will probably apply for the correction/re-registering just in case it might disadvantage our children in some future scenario we can't quite imagine. However I would appreciate anyone with knowledge of family law illustrating how this could possibly come about.

It might have something to do with maintenance if you split up, or inheritance if one/both parents dies without leaving a Will?

Used to make a difference for automatic Parental Authority, but don't think it does anymore.

I believe it's to do with the fact that they were registered as 'illegitimate' and now through your marriage they've been legitimised, making the birth registration incorrect. In practice it shouldn't make any difference to them, but technically you could get fined if you don't re-register them.

When we got married we weren't told that we would need to re-register ds1 and to be honest, I can't be bothered although I will probably try and get round to doing it one day

Thanks for the answers. So much about English law strikes me as very archaic!

...it's a hangover from the days when you were only legitimate if your parents were married (or your mother was married!). Then the legitimacy act came in (an entire Lord Peter Whimsey book is based on this law) which declared that "issue" were legitimate if parents were married at any time after the birth as well.
Big inheritance issues at the time as the "issue" is the direct beneficiary in law if either or both parent dies without a will.
In law, if you die intestate the first benficiary will be spouse, if there were children then they can also claim (legitimate ones!). Then it goes parents of deceased and then siblings then legitimate neice/nephews.
After that it goes to the Crown..distant relatives were exscluded from the legitimacy bill to stop cousins 300 times removed having claims on estates).
Basically if you have made a will then you should be ok UNLESS the will is contested by one of these close relatives who prove the child was not reregistered after the marriage and then technically they may have a case but it would be small.

do illegitimate still have no claim on a parent's eastate?

We had to re-register dd's birth after we got married, even though she was given dh's surname from the start - it is to do with inheritance laws.

illegitimate children could only claim on an estate by proving they were dependant, I think, under a separate Act to do with dependancy.

Thanks everyone esp Miggsie. It's interesting to see what order the beneficiaries come in if we die intestate. I can't imagine any of our parents, siblings or nieces saying they should have all our money as our sons were illegitimate, but I suppose it might happen in some families. It's pretty clear they are our dependants though, at least until they reach adulthood.

So basically if we have a will it's okay but it's probably still worth doing.

Thank you