BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court directed the Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths, Bengaluru, to change the name of the minor girl as per the request of the mother, who wanted to remove the name of her abandoned live-in partner and add her name and her family name in the child’s birth certificate issued on March 4, 2017.
The High Court held that the proposed change of the minor’s name, while retaining the father’s name in the birth certificate, does not affect substantive legal rights and is legally permissible. The insertion of the maternal derivative or family name in the birth certificate does not affect any substantive legal rights of any person. The biological and legal relationship between the child and the father, including the child’s rights of inheritance, succession, and maintenance, remains unaltered. The change is one of nomenclature and identity that reflects the actual family environment in which the child is being raised, the court said.
Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order on February 17, allowing the petition filed by a minor daughter, represented by her mother, seeking directions to the Registrar for a change of name of an eight-year-old girl.
The HC stated that the mother, the sole custodial parent, has every right to determine the name by which her minor daughter shall be known. This is an aspect of parental authority that is recognised under law.
The mother’s decision to give the child her own family name, particularly in circumstances where the father has abandoned the child, is a reasonable and rational exercise of parental authority and rational exercise of parental authority that serves the best interest of the child, the court added.
The minor girl was born out of a live-in relationship of a couple from Nepal, at a hospital in the city in 2017. The mother applied for a birth certificate by showing her name as mother and her live-in partner’s name as the father, which came to be issued on March 4, 2017.
Meanwhile, the live-in partner expressed unwillingness to continue his relationship with her and left for his hometown in Nepal. As he was not willing to take the responsibility for the upkeep of the daughter, the mother approached the Chief Registrar for the deletion of the name of the father and the addition of her name and her family name in the birth certificate, with relevant documents. But it was not considered, stating that they have no power to carry out such a correction.