Removal Of "Father's" Name From Birth Certificate In Tennessee

cwarley · #1 03-05-2008, 03:29 PM

I will try to keep this as short as possible.

My fiance is trying to get the father's (not biological) name removed from her son's birth certificate. The sort story is that she was raped when she was very young and when she had her son she decided at the time to put his name as the father on the birth certificate. She was married to him but not till after the child was born. When they got a divorce there was some paperwork filled out called "FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS AND ORDER OF PARENTAGE" no where in it does it state that he has rights to the child. It actually states "The Court further finds as follows: The Respondent is excluded as Father of Child Childs Name by parentage testing." Since the divorce she has had to get 2 restraining orders against him because of some pretty bad stuff. She wants desperatly to get his name removed from the birt certificate to help get him (the "father" on the birth certificate) out of her life.

I have already contacted the vitals department in TN and they are trying to help but so far their findings are that all we can do is to get a court order to have the name removed and that we have to get a lawyer to do this. Which this would be fine but we hired a lawyer last year to take care of this and he quit before he finished the job and we lost the money we had already given him and now we really don't have the cash to try and find another lawyer to do this.

Before the lawyer quit he did say something about that the "father" just needed to sign something to remove his name. Does anbody know if there is some sort of form we can get to him to sign and notorize and take to the cort to get the order.

Sorry for the length please ask any questions, we have been trying so hard to get this done for so long any help is greatly appreciated.

Mr. Knowitall · #2 03-08-2008, 09:15 AM

As you were told, it appears that you need a court order. Read this [PDF], and scroll down to Rule 1200-7-1-.04(9), which seems to be the governing rule under the facts you describe. (If I am misunderstanding something, look at the other subrules.)

Quoting Tennessee Department of Health Rule 1200-7-1-.04(9)

If an order of parentage is abrogated by a later judgment or order of the same or higher court, the clerk of the court which entered such order shall notify the State Registrar in writing. If a new birth certificate has been prepared, that certificate will be removed and placed in a sealed file with other information relating to the order of parentage, and the previous birth certificate will be reinstated in the active files.

cwarley · #3 03-10-2008, 01:05 PM

that is a big help I found the PDF and see what you are saying. There have been no other judgments or orders after the Order of Parentage. The last document that has mentioned anything about the relationship of the child and the man on the birth certificate stated "The Court further finds as follows: The Respondent is excluded as Father of Child Childs Name by parentage testing.", and that as you know was on the Order of Parentage.

I do agree and understand that I need to get an official order from the court, I just am wondering if there is any way to try and get that without having to sell my kidneys to another lawyer. It seems like the system is set up to prevent people without much money from getting what they need done. Is there some sort of way you can just go to the court and tell them what you want and they look over your paper work and tell you what you need to do besides "go find a lawyer".

And thank you for your info I do greatly appreciate it. Any more info will be greatly appreciated by anybody.

seniorjudge · #4 03-10-2008, 01:09 PM

Q: I do agree and understand that I need to get an official order from the court, I just am wondering if there is any way to try and get that without having to sell my kidneys to another lawyer.

A: There are some lawyers who require only one kidney.

GENERALLY, this is not a big deal and shouldn't cost that much IF the father is okay with it.

The last document that has mentioned anything about the relationship of the child and the man on the birth certificate stated "The Court further finds as follows: The Respondent is excluded as Father of Child Childs Name by parentage testing.", and that as you know was on the Order of Parentage.

Another thought: If you send the birth certificate bureaucrats a certified copy of this judgment, would that satisfy them? (My experience is that bureaucrats who issue birth certificates are exceptionally picky so you may need that court judgment after all; but it wouldn't hurt to try sending them a certified copy of the first judgment.)

cwarley · #5 03-10-2008, 01:40 PM

I apologize in advance for my poor grammar and spelling.

The Vitals Department in TN is the place that would handle doing the change and I did get in contact with one of them. I sent everything I had to them and after 3 months of them checking around they said that there wasn't really anything they could do unless they had an order. But I did try, and they were very helpfull.

We also are pretty sure that the "father" isn't going to make this easy on us. We can't contact him unless we go thru his mother (who he still lives with), because of the order of protection we have against him, because those things work both ways. And we are hoping that if we can just give her something to get to him and have him notarize it then that would be enough but I don't know if that would count and I wouldn't know for sure what would need to be on that. We are not sure if it will work but we are hoping that maybe his mother will make sure he does it.

In addition, I am not trying to bash lawyers, I know some are good, but they are hard to find. We hired a lawyer last year to get this done and forked out over 1k to him and he really messed us up, he told us to do some things regarding another matter and it almost got my fiancé thrown in jail, and then he quit without completing or doing anything, and I am not saying that because we didn't get what we wanted I am saying it because he really didn't do anything. The only court date we had, that he didn't come to, was initiated by us because my fiancé had to get an order of protection (restraining order) against the man on the birth certificate because he was threatening all of us, and anybody we knew, it got really bad. But we finally got that take care of on our own. But that is a separate matter. But just wanted to make sure I didn't offend anybody thinking that I was just a mean old fart who hated lawyers. I just hate to fork out more money and have the same thing happen.