Genealogy Forum UK

Just a thought!

I think I heard that if a child is born out of wedlock and his parents subsequently marry that the child is then counted as being legitimate.

Is this true? Has it always been true? do they issue a new birth certificate or amend the first one?

Legitimacy Act 1926

The Act allowed children to be legitimised by the subsequent marriage of their parents, provided that neither parent had been married to a third party at the time of the birth. When this occurred the legitimised birth was re-entered in the birth indexes for that year (sometimes many years after the original birth). The original entry would be annotated to refer to the new entry.

The act was modified by the Legitimacy Act 1959, which extended it to children whose parent(s) had been married to somebody else when they were born.

Hope this helps MG

moved to misc

Antie Em wrote:Legitimacy Act 1926

The Act allowed children to be legitimised by the subsequent marriage of their parents, provided that neither parent had been married to a third party at the time of the birth. When this occurred the legitimised birth was re-entered in the birth indexes for that year (sometimes many years after the original birth). The original entry would be annotated to refer to the new entry.

The act was modified by the Legitimacy Act 1959, which extended it to children whose parent(s) had been married to somebody else when they were born.

Hope this helps MG

Thank you Auntie Em -- just the facts that I was interested in.