illegitimate child 1927

[retire]

My ancestor had a child in 1927. There was a new birth certificate issued in 1931 with a fathers name on it. The woman married this man in 1929. Would he have had to adopt the child to have his name on that 1931 certificate?

[Peter Goodey]

Would he have had to adopt the child to have his name on that 1931 certificate?

No.

See the Legitimacy Act of 1926.

[retire]

I did read that act and it says if there is a subsequent marriage of the childs parents but it this case we are pretty sure that it was not her biological father who married her mother. The man that she married did appear as her father on the revised birth certificate issued in 1931.

[arthurk]

I've come across what seems to be a similar case to this, though in my case the re-registration wasn't until the 'child' was about 25 years old. Does anyone know why they might have done this? - clearly at that point it wouldn't have been anything to do with adoption.

I may be wrong as it's not something I've had to deal with, but in retire's case, if the man named as father in the 1931 registration had adopted the child, wouldn't there be an entry in the adoption registers? And as an adoption certificate is to all intents and purposes equivalent to a birth certificate, then there wouldn't have been any need for the 1931 registration?

[Peter Goodey]

we are pretty sure that it was not her biological father who married her mother

The fact that there was a re-registration surely means that the husband was admitting or claiming (or, if you like, falsely claiming) to be the biological father. So the position in law would be that the husband was the biological father.

[AntonyMMM]

If he is named as the father on the 1931 re-registered entry, then he was claiming to be the father of the child (whether that was true or not is another matter).

An adoption never leads to a re-registration, it is an entirely separate legal process.

Re-registrations under the Legitimacy Act, or occasionally for other reasons, could be done many years after the birth. The oldest one I have as an example was a man born in 1892, whose birth was then re-registered (under the Legitimacy Act) by his father in 1939 when the "child" was 47 years old.

[retire]

Thanks for all the help on this post Retire