Adoptive father can’t replace biological dad on birth certificate, rules Guj court

Source: Times of India dated 17.12.2018

Saeed Khan TNN

Ahmedabad:
A local court here has refused to replace the name of a child’s biological father with that of the adoptive parent on the birth certificate, saying that it was the “legal right of a child to preserve his or her identity — including nationality, name and family relations — as recognised by law”.

The adoptive parents had sought a change in the father’s name on the child’s birth certificate after the mother divorced her first husband and remarried. When the case went to the sessions court, it said: “It is not legal and valid to replace the name of the biological father or mother with that of adoptive parents...”

The sessions court quoted the Madras HC, which had in a similar case observed, “Assuming that there is yet another marriage, as it happens without much ado in western societies, is it possible to change the name of the parents every time there is a divorce followed by a fresh marriage?”

The court had, in fact, two different cases of this nature before it. In the first case, residents of Ranip in Gujarat, Jagdish Patel and his wife Vaibhavi, wanted to remove the name of the biological father, Kamleshkumar Jain, from the birth certificate of their daughter Priyanshi. Vaibhavi had married Jagdish after divorcing Jain. The court flatly refused to order the change.

In the second case, Bopal residents Bhanuprasad Chaudhary and his wife Shilpa wanted to remove the latter’s first husband Ghanshyam Patel’s name from the birth certificate of their daughter Manali. Shilpa had remarried after her first husband died. In this case too, the court turned down their request.

The court clarified that inserting the names of the adoptive parents was valid in cases of adoption of children abandoned by their biological parents. But in cases of divorce, it “poses a lot of difficulties”.

“The court cannot overlook the long-term needs and rights of these children. The right of a child to inherit the estate of its biological father will get defeated by a direction to effect corrections in the statutory records,” the court said.