Birth certification for Unmarried Foreigner father and Taiwanese Mother. Uk / Ireland Registration

Hi, My baby will be born next month. I am an Irish and UK Citizen, and the mother is Taiwanese. We are unmarried and need some clarifications on the birth registration and documentation needed to register the child in Uk / Ireland

  1. is it correct that the Birth Cert will not have the fathers name, as we are unmarried?

  2. What is household registration and can the foreigner father be named on this?

  3. Has anyone in a similar situation registered their child for citizenship in either UK or Ireland? and what documentation was needed? (Does UK and Ireland even recognise TW documentation?)

If anyone who has been through this process and can advise on the facts, I would be very grateful
Thanks,
Peter

The mother cannot help you on Taiwan side process?

If the baby is born in Taiwan, when the mother reports the baby’s birth, the baby is registered on Household registry and the baby gets household registration (hukou). The is equivalent with the baby’s Taiwanese citizenship.

You need to acknowledge the baby to put your name on the baby’s household registration (hukou), iiuc. If you can do it before the baby’s birth, your name might be on the baby’s birth certificate from the hospital, but I’m not sure. Anyway, for the registration in UK, it sound your baby’s birth should be registered in Taiwan (again, if the baby is born in Taiwan). If you acknowledge the baby your name may be somewhere on the baby’s hukou.

As for UK’s registration

1 Like

Get the original birth certificate from the hospital in English. They will try and tell you it’s not possible. It’s bullshit.
The English version of the birth certificate has spaces for both the father and mother’s names. It doesn’t matter if you are married or not.
Take the English birth certificate and get it notarized.
Create Household registration (if needed) linked to the mothers name (much easier and less hoops). If you are not in Taiwan you won’t be able to have your name on the household registration as it’s sort of the final step towards getting your ARC. If you are in Taiwan then you already have a Household Registration. Your employer is probably holding onto it.
Register the birth of your child with your oddly named sort of government office.
Apply for Citizenship through descent.
Provide the necessary documents to process this. Your passport or Irish drivers license as well as a copy of your full form birth certificate. Possibly your UK bank account info. Your child’s notarized English birth certificate. The mothers birth certificate, passport, household registration, and National ID card (all photocopied and witnessed/stamped).
Pay the money. Wait 6 weeks to 3 months. You should receive an email and then the official scroll on some fancy paper with a stamp on it.
Your child can have dual citizenship until a certain age. Perhaps longer if they’re really sporty or really smart. But if they go into the military or politics they will have to renounce the other of whichever citizenship they have to make themselves eligible.

I hope that helps.

1 Like

what do you mean?

How do you have ARC or APRC without Household Registration? Baby is due to be born in a month. This suggest the OP has been here some time which means they should have a Household Registration. Most Westerners wouldn’t be aware of it (as most fresh off the boat were probably chaperoned and helped around and to set these things up in that first 2 weeks of arriving).

I am not sure if you are serious or just kidding the OP.

If you have Household registration, it means you are a Taiwanese citizen. If you have Household registration, you cannot get APRC.

3 Likes

I’ve got Household Registration and I’m not a Taiwanese citizen. I was under the impression everybody had to get it. My Health Insurance and APRC both use my Household Registration and Passport as forms of ID.

just to clarify, I have ARC. Im not aware of household registration

Then the household registration you say and the household registration I say are different. I’m not sure on which one the OP is asking, but usually what people call as household registration in Taiwan is what I’m talking about.

Or, are you talking about your spouse’s household registration on which your name is put as spouse? If so, it is not yours. And, the OP doesn’t have it, because they are unmarried.

2 Likes

I did this recently for a similar case - baby born in Taiwan with one parent from the UK, one parent from elsewhere. Here is my input.

Do you have a specific need to register the birth in the UK? I don’t think there’s such thing as “registering for citizenship”. It is possible to register the birth in the UK but I’m not sure what advantage that brings. I remember there being some kind of a catch to that process and I have not done so.

You probably want a UK passport for the baby though, for travel reasons and as a primary form of ID - that was what I set out to get. And your questions are relevant for that process.

You get 2 birth certificates. One in Chinese, which I believe is an official Tw government record. This will have a space for the baby’s name, but the hospital did not and could not put anything there,as strange as that sounds.

The mother will be listed and they will only list the father if you can provide proof of marriage.

The hospital can also provide an English birth certificate. As far as I can tell, this is not an official Taiwan government document. It’s just a letter that the hospital can choose to provide in whatever format they want and without requirement of validating the info. So they can list any name(s) for the baby, and both parents info, even if unmarried, they likely won’t check the details.

I think this is a mandatory process for a baby of Taiwanese nationality. I don’t know about this process though, since that was not the case for me.

The UK passport application is done primarily online, it is fairly well documented. However, if it gives you some weird requirements, like it asks for the baby’s maternal grandmothers birth certificate (why would they care about such info - that’s not even the British side of your family), pick up the phone and ask for clarification. The requirements were not quite as extensive as the website suggested.

I had to provide my (UK) birth certificate and one of my parent’s birth certificates to demonstrate to what degree UK nationality was held and hence is able to be passed onto the foreign-born baby. Also the birth certificates were needed, both Chinese and English. They later requested evidence of Tw household registration, but since that didn’t apply here, they accepted a copy of the baby’s ARC.

Yes it was just a piece of A4 paper. But it was signed, stamped, and notarized. And it was listed as the primary birth certificate. Because it was signed, stamped, and notarized by the hospital it was easily traced by immigration authorities for verification. Myself and my kids have multiple names registered with the government. The Mandarin and separate English versions. It can cause confusion when going through immigration through multiple countries as it essentially means we appear and disappear.

1 Like

thank you for this! My girlfriend has contacted the authorities and the hospital and they insist the actual birth certificate will not have fathers name (as we are not married). I believe most people get around this by getting married and then divorced…But that’s not what I want to do.
So I guess need to see if this English “letter” can be issued by the hospital…

Get multiple copies of birth cert… after a bunch of years they won’t issue them anymore.

1 Like

Thanks for this!
Hopefully the hospital will play ball and not penalise me for not being married!

1 Like

good advice, thanks

If you get the English version birth cert, with your name on it, and take it to the local notary and submit that to the Irish embassy in China along with a copy of your own birth cert with a passport application for the baby, it should be no problem. (If you are not born in Ireland you might have an extra hoop to demonstrate the baby’s Irish nationality, highly unlikely to be unsurmountable though, would probably invoke digging out more birth certs)

1 Like

thanks Liam, yes I was born in Ireland.
So is this process to get citizenship or to apply for a passport?

Yes, that’s how we did it. Zero hiccups.

That gets the passport, and the passport demonstrates citizenship.

You need a countersignee on the application form. We asked the GP doctor and he said ok.

Always good to phone the embassy and if a Chinese person picks up ask to speak to an Irish officer. Explain to them and then address the application to that person.

Thanks Liam, great advice buddy!

1 Like

Let us know how it goes, and congratulations!

1 Like