Unmarried Fathers' Rights
Rights of the Unmarried Father.
If you are the father of a child born outside marriage you start off with no rights or responsibilities other than a financial responsibility, towards the child even if you are living with the mother. If both the parents are in agreement, the father's lack of legal rights is of little practical consequence. This means that you can share the practical, but not the legal responsibilities with the mother. You can, however, establish rights and responsibilities for your child by:
- jointly registering the child's birth,
- applying to the court to make a parental responsibility order
- a residence or contact order or by
- making a parental responsibility agreement with the mother to have equal responsibility
However if the father subsequently marries the mother of his child, he automatically assumes parental responsibility as though he had been married to the mother when the child was born.
Joint Registration
If your child was born on or after the 15th April 2002 you can get parental responsibility for your child if you and the child's mother jointly register the birth of the child. A child's birth can only be jointly registered where both the father and mother agree to this procedure.
Remember acquiring parental responsibility through joint registration only applies to children born on or after 15 April 2002.
If you are thinking of applying for an order through the court it is always advisable to seek legal advice as there may be costs to consider.
Applying for a parental responsibility order
If you wish to apply for a responsibility order you as the father must make a formal application for a parental responsibility order from the court. You can apply for the order even if you are living with the mother.
Contact orders
A contact order gives the father rights to have contact with a child. The order will either specify the details of how and when contact should take place or else grant reasonable contact to the father, leaving the parents to work out the detailed arrangements. A contact order can also be used to prevent contact with the child.
Making a parental responsibility agreement
A parental responsibility agreement can be made whether or not you are living with the mother. Copies of a parental agreement are available from divorce county courts. This agreement does not contain details of any specific plans for the child's upbringing. Therefore if you and the mother want to make a detailed agreement relating to the child's upbringing you must make a separate agreement to deal with these issues.
- A parental responsibility agreement can only be brought to an end by court order and both parents will therefore need to consider carefully the implications of making one. It may be helpful for you to seek legal advice.
- The parental responsibility agreement must be signed by both parents and by a witness and registered at the Office of Care and Protection.
Their address is:
Office of Care and Protection
Royal Courts of Justice. Chichester Street BELFAST BT1 3JF
Costs for court orders
There will be a charge for orders made under the Children Order 1995. For proceedings that involve more than one child - there will be a charge for each order for each child. This may be expensive. However you should check to see if you are eligible to receive legal advice and assistance. You will not have to pay these charges if you are in receipt of income support, working tax credit and/ or child tax credit (depending on income). Always seek legal advice!
Child Support Agency
The Child Support Agency is supposed to work out a rate of maintenance which the non-resident parent must pay on behalf of qualifying children.
•A non-resident parent (NRP) is a parent who does not normally live with the child or children. A qualifying child is a child who does not live full-time with the NRP and for whom the NRP is liable to pay maintenance. The amount of maintenance is worked out according to the legislation and depends on:-
- the Non-resident parents income
- the number of qualifying children
- whether the NRP has other children who live with her/him
- whether there is shared care of the qualifying children
- whether there are special circumstances which mean the calculation is adjusted.
If you have been given or sent notification of a child support decision, for example, how much maintenance you will have to pay and you think it is wrong, you have one month from the date you were notified to dispute the decision. You can ask for the decision to be revised.
You can dispute the decision outside the one month period but it is advisable to seek advice and information about how to do this.
You can dispute decisions (or report a change of circumstances) by contacting the CSA either by telephone, in person, in writing or by e-mail. Indeed CSA encouraged people to get in touch by telephone and to report changes and/or query decisions by speaking to their case worker. It is always advisable to make a note of the name of the person you are speaking too, the date and time you telephoned and to also send a short letter (stating your National Insurance number and details) to confirm your telephone conversation.
The telephone number for the team which made a decision on your case will be stated on the written notification of the decision.
It is sometimes possible for a dispute to be resolved very quickly over the telephone. However, where the dispute is not resolved and you are still not happy with the explanation you should make sure that your telephone conversation is being treated as a dispute and that you want the CSA to look at the decision again.
The CSA operates a national enquiry line. Calls are charged at the local rate and the line is open Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm. In N. Ireland the number is: 0845 713 9700.
If you need information and advice please contact: