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Parents
Parental rights and responsibilities
Unlike mothers, fathers do not always have 'parental responsibility' for their children. With more than one in three children now born outside marriage, some parents may be unclear about who has legal parental responsibility for their children.
What is parental responsibility?
While the law does not define in detail what parental responsibility is, the following list sets out the key roles:
- providing a home for the child
- having contact with and living with the child
- protecting and maintaining the child
- disciplining the child
- choosing and providing for the child's education
- determining the religion of the child
- agreeing to the child's medical treatment
- naming the child and agreeing to any change of the child's name
- accompanying the child outside the UK and agreeing to the child's emigration, should the issue arise
- being responsible for the child's property
- appointing a guardian for the child, if necessary
- allowing confidential information about the child to be disclosed
Who has parental responsibility?
If the parents of a child are married to each other or if they have jointly adopted a child, then they both have parental responsibility. This is not automatically the case for unmarried parents.
According to current law, a mother always has parental responsibility for her child. A father, however, has this responsiblity only if he is married to the mother or has acquired legal responsibility for his child through one of these three routes:
- (after December 1 2003) by jointly registering the birth of the child with the mother
- by a parental responsiblity agreement with the mother
- by a parental responsiblity order, made by a court
Living with the mother, even for a long time, does not give a father parental responsiblity and if the parents are not married, parental responsiblity does not always pass to the natural father if the mother dies.
All parents (including adoptive parents) have a legal duty to financially support their child, whether they have parental responsibility or not.
Applying to the courts for parental responsibility
A father can apply to the court to gain parental responsibility. In considering an application from a father, the court will take the following into account:
- the degree of commitment shown by the father to his child
- the degree of attachment between father and child
- the father's reasons for applying for the order
The court will then decide to accept or reject the application based on what it believes is in the child's best interest.
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