If you had kids before you were married you need to understand this law

You've probably never even heard of it

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British law states that if you had children before you wed you must then re-register them after getting hitched.

The Legitimacy Act 1976 applies to all parents, regardless of whether or not the natural father appears on his children’s birth certificates.

The obscure law came to light after the government’s LA1 child re-registration form was shared on various parental Facebook groups.

Some parents say they were surprised to find out about the law – which would require paying for a new birth certificate - that many of them never knew even existed.

Kate Tynan shared the form herself after she was shocked that she had never been told about the need to re-register her six-year-old son, Noah, who had been in attendance at her wedding.

The mother of two insisted that the registrar didn’t mention it when she registered his birth as an unmarried woman.

"I'm still confused as to whether it's something I actually have to do and wouldn't have known anything about it had I not read someone else's post on Facebook. If it's a legal requirement you should be told about it," she told the Manchester Evening News.

The law was introduced as a result of an archaic law which meant babies born to unmarried parents would subsequently be prohibited from acquiring any kind of inheritance.

However, it is now considered outdated by solicitors who suspect that a parents aren’t likely to be fined for failing to re-register their children’s births after they have wed.

“The re-registration is not to grant the father parental responsibility,” Katharine Marshall, associate solicitor at WHN Solicitors, explained to the newspaper, “he’d already have this as an unmarried father, provided he was included on the original birth certificate - but for the child to be recognised as a ‘child of the marriage."