Adoptive father can’t replace biological father on birth certificate

A local court refused to replace the name of a child’s biological father with that of the adoptive father on a birth certificate, holding that it is the “legal right of a child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law”.

This was after the woman divorced her first husband and remarried. A sessions court said, “It is not legal and valid to replace the name of the biological father or mother with that of adoptive parents…”

The court quoted the Madras high court, which observed, “Assuming, (God forbids) 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 two different cases before it. Ranip-residents 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 stepfather had formally adopted the girl as his daughter and approached the court for the declaration and to replace the biological father’s name with his. Vaibhavi also wanted to correct her name, which was written as Vaishali, in the column for the mother’s name. The court flatly refused to order the change in names.

In another case, Bopal residents Bhanuprasad Chaudhary and his wife Shilpa wanted to remove Shilpa’s first husband Ghanshyam Patel’s name from the birth certificate of their daughter Manali and replace it with Bhanuprasad’s. Shilpa married after her first husband had died. The court ruled that this was not possible.

Referring to orders passed by the Madras HC and the Punjab & Haryana HC, additional sessions judge T K Rana observed, “It is a legal right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law. The fundamental premises on which the Hindu law of adoption proceeds is that the relationship between the biological parents and the children can never get severed, except in accordance with provision of this Act. Hence, it is not legal and valid to replace the name of the biological father or mother with that of the adoptive parents as stated in the adoption deed.”

The court further clarified that inserting the name of the adoptive parents is easy and valid in cases of adoption of children who are abandoned by their biological parents. But in cases of divorce, insertion of the stepfather’s name on the birth certificate “poses a lot of difficulties” keeping in mind, “The future rights of the child”.