Who Has Parental Responsibility?

A mother automatically has parental responsibility for her child from birth.

A father usually has parental responsibility if he’s:

• married to the child’s mother
• listed on the birth certificate (after a certain date, depending on which part of the UK the child was born in)

You can apply for parental responsibility if you don’t automatically have it.

Births registered in England and Wales

If the parents of a child are married when the child is born, or if they’ve jointly adopted a child, both have parental responsibility.

They both keep parental responsibility if they later divorce.

Unmarried parents

An unmarried father can only get legal 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

If you would like more information or advice, please call us on 01462 615233 or email info@willtrustandprotect.co.uk