BUT if marriage were extended to same-sex couples then it would be relevant to consider both ways of phrasing who can currently receive titles by marriage.
Actually, even two men can be listed on the birth certificate as the child’s parents, not including the surrogate mother at all. Two women can also be listed if the child was conceived via donor insemination. Inclusion on the birth certificate is of major importance when it comes to parental rights and responsibilities. It means that it’s not necessary for the non-biological parent to adopt the child.
Almost anyone can get a parental responsibility order, if permitted to by the others with PR (usually the biological parents, presuming they have PR) and by the court.
The HFEA 2008 was what brought about most of these changes. Link.
I’m not sure how that would affect inheritance of titles - after all, the parents are named on the birth certificate, so the child is not adopted. It’s not only gay couples that are affected by this change, either, it’s straight unmarried couples having IVF (straight married couples have always been able to put the father down on the birth certificate).
Still, since iillegitimate children don’t have the right to inherit titles, I guess that would apply to children born outside of a straight marriage, even if they were born within a civil partnership. That certainly is something that might change if we ever get full same-sex marriage.
Yes, it would. But, right now, it isn’t, so you can’t say that your second statement applies as an independent condition. If and when same-sex marriage arrives, either Parliament or the courts will have to decide whether your second statement is to apply as a condition. Until that decision is made, we can’t say that it applies as a condition.
The default position under HFEA is that the woman who carries a child under a surrogacy arrangement is treated as the mother “for all purposes”. Her husband, if she has one, is treated as the father for all purposes, unless it is shown that he did not agree to the surrogacy arrangement. Unless this default is set aside, the birth certificate will reflect it. Despite the “all purposes” language, the Act creates an exception for “the succession to any dignity or title of honour”, so if the surrogate mother or her husband are titled, the child will not inherit that title.
The default can be set aside either by adoption or by a “parental order” under the HFEA. (Note that this is not the same thing as a “parental responsibility order” under the child care legislation.) Consequently if you want a birth certificate showing the genetic parents rather that the surrogate mother and her husband, you need either an adoption order or a parental order. Titles do not pass by adoption. HFEA is silent about the effect of a parental order on a title, but the general intention seems to be that a parental order acts in the same way as an adoption order, so I doubt that a title would pass under a parental order.
The net result is that a child born under a surrogacy arrangement will not inherit a title either from his or her surrogate parents or from his or her genetic parents. The child will have no choice but to bung a large sum of money to the party currently in power to secure a new title.
If Wikipedia is correct then Her Majesty has decided that adopted children of peers are entitled to the same styles as biological children, but do not have any right of succession to the peerage itself.
But both do automatically apply, tautologically. Only men can pass titles to a spouse, and only women can have titles passed to them. Neither apply as an indedependent condition, they both apply tautologically. That simply is true. I’m really not sure why you’re arguing that it’s untrue.
I was correcting your statement that a parental order can only be made in favour of a married couple. Under the HFEA 2008, this is no longer true. Seriously, the HFEA has made tons of significant changes to the stuff you’re talking about - the 1990 act is not a good one to reference now.
At least we totally agree about titles passing on to children via adoption or parental orders, and that was the question posed in this thread.
Nope, Anne was raised to the peerage on September 1st, 1532. She and Henry VIII married (in secret) on January 25th, 1533. She was the first royal mistress to be given a title in her own right. Normally when the king fancied a married woman it was her husband would be given things like land, court positions, appointments, or a title in exchange for cooperation in the use of his “property”.
I’m not saying that they are untrue; I’m saying that they are not independent conditions, and therefore you cannot assume that they would apply as independent conditions if same-sex marriage were possible, as your post 11 above seems to assume. If and when same-sex marriage is possible; that is a decision which Parliament or the courts will have to make, and neither of them has made it yet. We cannot therefore say that a man could not acquire a courtesy title by marrying a titled man (although we can speculate that that is the decision that parliament would make).
