Family Law for unmarried couples
Part 3
‘Every right has its responsibilities’
There are very well-known, established laws relating to the care of children.
Responsibility for the children
Parental responsibility (PR) means ‘all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property’.
All mothers automatically have PR. Fathers acquire PR if they are married to the mother, or their name is present on the child’s birth certificate, or there is a parental responsibility agreement completed between you. If none of this applies, the court orders it for the father to ensure that responsibilities are shared.
To put the statute in our language, the sorts of issues that relate to a contribution for someone with PR are as follows.
Your partner can seek PR by agreement or Court application, if no other valid legal principle exists. For example, your child may be born having been conceived by IVF, both parents are the same sex and there is no civil partnership.
- Decisions about your child’s education, religion, medical care.
- Day to day decisions regarding outings, leisure, and nutrition.
Obviously, such decisions vary as time goes on and the child grows up enough to have their own views but of course that is a time when you can all work together and compromise.
It’s all about identifying decent fathers and partners. So, although it’s not recognised as an automatic human right to acquire PR, the court needs to have a very good reason not to award these rights and responsibilities to a parent of a child who needs them.
Removal of Parental Responsibility
PR can be removed if you are deemed to be sufficiently disruptive to the child’s welfare. This is a very draconian order, and the courts are very reluctant to exercise this power without very good reasons.
You might think that because you haven’t got PR, you’re not obliged to pay maintenance for the child if things go awry. Wrong. You are.
A word of caution. There is nothing to stop a child from being removed from the UK by a parent with Parental Responsibility without prior agreement by the parent without Parental Responsibility.
Parental responsibility… It’s your responsibility.