Some advice regarding my childs citizenship please. :)

[Misstraveller]

Hi!! I'm new here, and I'm hoping someone may have some advice or direction for me. I'm an Australian citizen and am returning to Adelaide in the very near future. I have renewed all my docs etc. I asked about how I would go about obtaining citizenship for my 12yr old. The high commission said they would have no problem obtaining it as I have been a citizen for around 35 years. But, I would need the fathers consent. I explained that the father is not only NOT on the birth certificate but he has never ever even met my child. The high commission said they could ask for evidence that the father has never been on the scene. .. I asked how can I provide evidence of something that's never happened but they couldn't give me any suggestions. Has anyone else experienced this? Was the high commission right in saying I will need further documentation or are they being over cautious? I really hope all that made sense.. any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[NicF]

Hi, welcome to the forum. I'm afraid I can't he as this is not something I have had experience with but there are quite a number of threads over on our sister site Poms in Oz that discuss this issue in quite some detail that might be helpful.

[Misstraveller]

Thank you! ! I'll copy and paste it. many thanks! !

[Blossom]

What a hard situation. Surely your children will be citizens no matter what the father said anyway. Moving here I understand they would need all that, but not for citizenship. Hopefully you get some good answers on our sister site.

[Misstraveller]

What a hard situation. Surely your children will be citizens no matter what the father said anyway. Moving here I understand they would need all that, but not for citizenship. Hopefully you get some good answers on our sister site.

It's really difficult because oz has such strong paternal beliefs (and quite rightly so) but because of that they don't want to just go ahead and give kids citizenships etc in case they are separating the father from the child against his wishes. I fully understand and agree with their regulations but I'm in a totally different position. I got a little advice from sister site which was very helpful. (Book an appt with a solicitor soon as I get there and make a statuary declaration and take character references with me). It's so hard because you can't prove something that's never existed lol.

[Rabeah]

It has to do with 'The Hague Convention', not only Australia has 'strong paternal beliefs' UK and most of Western countries have this in place as well but because Australia is a high sought after immigration country it just appeares to be that way.

It's just in the best interest of the child to proof everything is in order before removing children from their country of origin without the consent of the other parent.

 

You'll be fine, provide them a statutory declaration + the birth certificate and what ever documentation they want.

 

It's just a precaution from the family legislative side of OZ as otherwise every prospective emigrating parent would just claim 'father has never had any contact with the child' and would get away with that in cases where that's not true to avoid time and money consuming court cases and court approvals.