Child Passport Renewal

[Mabso]

Hi, very new to this site, but wanted to share some helpful information. The Mrs and I are not married, but live together with our children.

We both have our fairly traditional roles in the household, which includes me sorting out the family holidays and associated planning.

I went to renew our children’s passports recently with what I believed was plenty of time to do so.

However, I later found out that I have no parental rights to apply for a passport for my children. I had to get a letter, which I typed and printed, for my Mrs to sign. I then posted the letter. This one single event led to a 4 week delay, which currently leaves my son’s passport being “printed” with my flight tomorrow.

The point of this thread is advice to anyone in the same family situation. If your partner applies for the passports, then please make sure the application is in the mums name. Single sex families have to jump through even bigger hoops!

I understand the logic behind why they do this, but it is no deterrent, I could have easily signed the letter on the Mrs behalf if she wasn’t around! 🤷🏻‍♂️

So, if you needed the letter to apply for the passports, and it was going to add to the application time, why didn't your wife just apply instead?

If you are on the children's birth certificates then you have parental responsibility.

Because he didn't know the letter was needed when he applied.

Hi, yes I am on the both birth certificates, hence when I read the online guidance I thought I was ok to apply:

What is parental responsibility?
All mothers and most fathers have legal rights and responsibilities as a parent - known as ‘parental responsibility’.
If you have parental responsibility, your most important roles are to:
provide a home for the child
protect and maintain the child
You’re also responsible for:
disciplining the child
choosing and providing for the child’s education
agreeing to the child’s medical treatment
naming the child and agreeing to any change of name
looking after the child’s property

Unmarried parents
An unmarried father can get parental responsibility for his child in 1 of 3 ways:

• jointly registering the birth of the child with the mother (from 1 December 2003)
• getting a parental responsibility agreement with the mother
• getting a parental responsibility order from a court

Both of my children were born post 2003.

So you have parental responsibility, i'm not sure why you thought you needed anything else?

Did you not register the births for your children? Surely you must have registered with your partner if you are on the BC, so according to that you have parental rights.

That’s was the problem, I didn’t think I needed anything else - it was the passport office that felt otherwise!

Yes, all registered, all living at the same address, and just renewals of existing passports. In fact we did all 4 passports together before, just mine and hers are 10years, and the kids were 5 years, hence only theirs being renewed.

OP you're not being very clear, the passport office must have felt that you didn't have parental rights, but you're not saying what they actually said. All you would have needed to show was the childrens birth certificates and that would have proved it.

So they made a mistake then? Why didn't you query it? I wouldn't have gone to the trouble of writing a letter if I had evidence of having parental responsibility. I'd have produced that instead.