Parental responsibility

What is 'parental responsibility'?

Parental responsibility essentially means the right to make important decisions about a child, for example about where they should live, where they should go to school, and what medical treatment they should or should not have.

In most cases, having parental responsibility is exactly the same as what most people think being a parent is. However, that is not always the case. It is possible (although rare) for a parent who has no involvement in a child's life to have no parental responsibility, and it possible for people other than parents to have parental responsibility (for example, grandparents or other guardians who may be raising a child).

A child's mother will automatically have parental responsibility on the birth of her child. A child's father will automatically  have parental responsibility if they were married to the mother at the time of the child's birth. A father who was not married at the time of the birth will not automatically have parental responsibility but can acquire it in a number of ways, including by being registered as the child's father on the child's birth certificate, by marrying the mother, by entering into a parental responsibility with the mother and filing it at court, by obtaining a court order giving him parental responsibility, or by obtaining a court order that the child shall live with them.

Parental responsibility is not affected by the separation of the parents.

We do not here cover the acquisition of parental responsibility by step-parents, same sex parents, surrogacy or adoption, but we can advise on all of these matters.