Father needing to adopt his own child after marrying?

[Piffle]

DP is insistent this happened to an acquaintance

Couple had 2 kids before they got married
Then he had to adopt his own kids after the marriage?

AS we are unmarried and have 2 kids he is insisting we will need to do this
Surely he is talking through his ass?

nooooooo. thats defo not right. no way.

the only way I figured it could happen was if he was not on the birth cert maybe?

no that can't be right. what on earth would the adoption papers say? who would be giving the children over to him? no way.

I think was true many years ago (maybe not in the UK but elsewhere certainly).Probably has changed now....

the ass talketh, surely?

Apparently this is true in Switzerland. Nowhere else that I know of though.

there's something called parental responsibilty which is not autoimatic for the father if the couple is not married (ie has no legal right to interfere in medical decisions etc)
but this is rectified as soon as the couple is married.
would not have to go through an adoption process. your dp's acquaintance but be making it up / exaggerating!

dp says it was 3 yrs ago...

DH and I were not married when DD was born. When we did get married I just needed to go to the local registrar to get DD re-registered as a child of the marriage. Took less than 20 minutes.

dd1 was born before dh and I were married. We had to re-register the birth but not adopt.

I know that when my step-dad adopted my brother that my mum had to adopt him as well. I.e. she had to adopt her own son (she was quite upset about it at the time).

I think you are right Piffle, if he is not on the birth cert and wants parental responsibility, he may have to adopt them.

Not if he's on the birth certificate and even if the kids have the mum's name, all it takes is a form to the register general and you get a new birth certificate in the father's name which can show the date of the marriage if you want it to.

We are in this situation at the moment and asked three weeks ago when we registered our second child.

It could be true if the mother is not the biological mother of the children and is adopting them. In that case the father has to adopt as well, as otherwise his wife has greater rights over his children than he does. However, this is not true if both parents are the biological parents of the children and simply marry after the children have been born.

The law was also changed on parental responsilibility (I think in 2003) if the unmarried father is present when the birth is registered he has full parental rights.