Parental Responsibility

Parental responsibility is defined in Section 3 (1) of the Children Act 1989 as being “all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by Law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property”. 

This is a very important role for any parent but can become a bone of contention once parents have separated.

Mothers obtain parental responsibility automatically by giving birth to the child. Fathers obtain parental responsibility by either being married to the mother of the child when he or she is born, or alternatively, if the parents are not married, by being registered as the father of the child on the birth certificate. Alternatively, fathers can make an application to Court for a Parental Responsibility Order.

Fathers must seek the approval of the Court in order to give up parental responsibility in the UK.

Parental responsibility does not mean you have a right to spend time with your children, if you do not live with them, but the other parent must include you when making important decisions about their lives. Such decisions include:-

1. Where they go to school.
2. How to discipline them.
3. Agreeing to their medical treatment.
4. Choosing, registering or changing their names.

If care proceedings are issued by the Local Authority then the Local Authority acquires parental responsibility when a child is made subject to a Care Order, whether that be interim or otherwise. If at the conclusion of care proceedings a Special Guardianship Order is granted to the carers of the child or children, then those carers will become Special Guardians and acquire parental responsibility for the child or children which they will share with the parents. However the Special Guardian’s parental responsibility will be enhanced and they therefore have overriding powers when making decisions for the child or children.

Historically it has been very difficult to remove the parental responsibility of an absent parent and rare but justifiable reasons for doing so would include abusive behaviour, or withholding consent for medical treatment, for example.

However, in the case of Re: GF (a minor) (2023) EWFC 203 this opened up the door for potential applications to remove a parent’s parental responsibility. In this particular case the father himself applied to terminate his parental responsibility to reflect the fact that he had no relationship with his child. The child’s welfare was the Courts paramount consideration and HHJ Levey summarised the principles as follows:-

1. Parental responsibility describes an adult’s responsibility to secure the welfare of the child, which is to be exercised for the benefit of the child, not the adult.
2. If the circumstances are such that the court would not conceivably make a Parental Responsibility Order, were one does not already exist, this is likely to indicate that parental responsibility could be terminated.
3. It is appropriate to terminate parental responsibility where there is no element in the bundle of responsibilities that make up parental responsibility which the father could, in present or foreseeable circumstances, exercise in a way that would benefit the child.

In addition to this the Court considered that if the father’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights conflicts with the child’s rights under Article 8, the rights of the child takes precedence.

The result of this case is that the father’s application was granted on the basis that he was not exercising any of the rights associated with parental responsibility.

This case illustrates now that parental responsibility may also be terminated where there is no current relationship between a father and a child. 

I have recently made an application to court to terminate a father’s parental responsibility on the above basis. The father had declared he no longer wished to see the children or have any relationship with them. The application was refused but, in the court’s judgement, they specified that the application was only refused because of the short passage of time (a matter of 4 months) that had passed since the father declared his lack of interest in the children. This has opened up the possibility that the same application can be made in the future, although the court did not declare what period of time would be appropriate before they would terminate the father’s parental responsibility.

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