That’s different - married men are considered fathers in the UK too, even if they couldn’t possibly be. We’re talking about unmarried parents, though I guess I’ll specify that I mean unmarried parents where the mother isn’t married to anyone else.
I know that in the US there were be lots of different rules, but do any of them really allow the mother to put any old name down on the father’s section of the birth certificate?
I don’t know for certain about now- but I do know that it used to be the case that a birth certificate was essentially meaningless regarding paternity if the parents weren’t married. Here is a quote from my city’s website
But what I am absolutely certain of is that not all hospitals require proof that the parents are married -
- If parents are not married, parentage may be established by an Acknowledgment of Paternity, an order of Filiation or an Order of Adoption.
- Married? Married parents, regardless of sex, have the right to have both their names on their child’s birth certificate. Some hospitals require proof of marriage. Check with the hospital to find out if you need to bring a copy of your marriage license with you.
So if I say I am married to the father and they don’t require proof, I can get him on the certificate even if we are not in fact married.
And then, there is the separate issue of surname- in my state ( and possibly many others) an umarried mother can give the child any surname she likes, including the putative rather- regardless of whether he has acknowledged paternity.
That link is about ordering replacement birth certificates, not about registering a birth.
Maybe I should post this tangent in GQ.
I can’t figure out how to link to the quoted part- but it’s on that page when you go down to the FAQ and expand
“What do I need to know about a birth certificate for the baby I am expecting soon?”
I kept my name, but am married. As far as I remember, no one asked for proof we were married when we filled out the birth certificate for our son. I’m positive we didn’t have to show a marriage certificate, because we lost that . . .
Here is my state’s quick info on establishing parentage.
If you look under reasons to establish paternity it states one reason to do so is to put the father’s name on the birth certificate.
Question for @SciFiSam or any other Brits - what if the woman doesn’t name a father, or the presumed father doesn’t want to sign the birth certificate?
OK, so in your area the birth certificate doesn’t establish parentage, but you have to establish parentage in some way before adding a father’s name, if he’s not your legal spouse. Seems relatively reasonable, though our method is simpler.
If the woman doesn’t name the father, he can go to court to apply for a declaration of parentage, which would usually include a paternity test. The father would then automatically be added to the birth certificate records, and would be on there on any re-issued birth certificates (they’re very easy to get).
If the father doesn’t want to be on the birth certificate, the mother can still request child support from him, and he can dispute it by requesting a paternity test. The father’s name can be added at a later date; not sure what the time limit is, or if there is one at all.
I worked with a guy named Jose Yamasaki. He was Peruvian.
It’s for the child’s knowledge of his fathers people, some relatives may want to establish relationships. I know moms gave their baby a hyphenated last name. His and hers ymmv.
That’s not so much for laffs. Both Peru and Brazil have large expat ethnic Japanese communities. Argentina has a good sized German expat community. So family names from the Old Country and given names from the current country are not so rare there.
They’re common in the USA too, but we’ve had, e.g. Irish and Italians and Germans in the USA long enough now that we don’t see those family names as being much “foreign”. So e.g. Bob Pasquale or Sam O’Hara don’t strike us as being mismatched even though they are.
I know. That’s why I mentioned he was Peruvian. It makes it understandable.
when Clinton was governor one thing he did was add Dads SSN to birth certificate to make it easier to find him if he left town. Don’t know if other states do that now.
Don’t know if it is true in all states but you can avoid child support by disowning the child formally. I think that is rare unless mom remarries and the new husband wants to adopt the kid.
In every state I know about, you can’t disown the child formally unless a court determines that being disowned is in the best interests of the child (which does happen, but is pretty rare).
It’s actually not just “disowning the child formally” - the person who will no longer be responsible for support would have to surrender his/her parental rights. And if both parents are known, both parents would generally have to surrender their rights (thus freeing the child for adoption) except in the special case where a stepparent wishes to adopt. Courts do not allow only the non-custodial parent to surrender his or rights even if the custodial parent doesn’t want child support because the custodial parent’s financial situation may change.
See my earlier post in this thread for a wrinkle on this one:
Why would Sam O’Hara be mismatched? Samuel and Samantha, and just Sam, aren’t unusual names in Ireland. Samuel Beckett is one famous example.
Picking an Irish surname may have been a bad example, because it’s entirely possible that English first names are very common in Ireland. But I suspect there’s an actual Irish equivalent to Samuel , just as Seán is the Irish equivalent of John.
But I disagree with LSLGuy about why these names don’t seem to be mismatched in the US. I don’t think it has anything to do with not seeing Irish/Italian/German surnames as foreign because people also don’t see names like Andrew Wong or John Fernandez or Richard Ryszard as mismatched. I suspect on some level it’s a matter of expecting that no matter where the last name originated at some point children will be given names common where they live while simultaneously not realizing it’s not just English-speaking countries that have ethnic communities of either immigrants or expats. So Andrew Wong living in the US doesn’t seem mismatched but Guillermo Schneider living in Argentina does.
Yeah, but even though Sean is the Irish equivalent of John, there are also Irish people called John.
Agreed about the expectations, and you put it very well. There are significant Chinese communities in Russia and most of the former Soviet states, so when I was teaching it used to not be uncommon to meet a someone with a Chinese surname and parentage, whose first language was Russian and could only write in Russian. It would not be weird to meet a Vasily Chen, for example.
Yes it was. Samuel Beckett indeed. Opps! :smack:
But overall I think you nailed it.
Here in SoFL we have lots of Brazilians. One of my wife’s pal is ethnic purebred Japanese born and raised in Brazil to first generation Japanese emigrants to Brazil. Her birth family name is obviously Japanese, her given name is typically Brazilian Portuguese. She married an ethnic Brazilian so her married last name is typically Brazilian. And here in the US she uses the Anglicized equivalent of her given name to make it easier for us gringos to deal with. Her English is pretty good, but her combo of Japanese & Brazilian accents is both adorable and … idiosyncratic.
So whatever expectations one brought to that story, there was probably a surprise somewhere. Even those of us who think we’re worldly and open-minded are sometimes brought up short by our unconscious parochial assumptions. No wonder the folks who do live a parochial / provincial life think this is all too complicated and changing too fast from the supposedly pure and predictably mono-ethnic world they grew up in Smallville USA.