Joint Birth Registration: Recording Responsibility

Joint birth registration is an important first step for parents and children, and real benefits can flow from it. Children have the right to know that their parents take responsibility for them, and a father’s name on a birth certificate symbolises his commitment to his child.

This White Paper sets out changes to the law in England and Wales to make joint birth registration a legal requirement for all unmarried parents unless this is decided by the registrar to be impossible, impracticable or unreasonable.

The document sets out a series of non-legislative measures to promote and support joint birth registration and changes to give mothers a right to insist that the father acknowledges his responsibilities to his child by registering on the birth certificate. Equally, it gives a father a new right to insist that he is registered.

The White Paper focuses on the way the birth registration system applies to unmarried parents and their children, particularly from the child’s perspective. It does not cover the birth registration process for married couples, nor does it cover changes to birth certificates arising from adoption, or from the changes proposed in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to allow a same-sex couple to be recorded as parents at birth.

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