Registration woes for babies conceived before marriage in UAE
Staff Report
DUBAI - Expatriate couples in the UAE with a baby born out of wedlock may face difficulties getting a birth certificate for the child.
According to the UAE law, no birth certificate will be issued to any child born less than 180 days from the date the parents’ marriage certificate was issued. The issue of a child born out of wedlock will also be referred to court.
Advocate Khalid Abdel Wahab, founder of Al Midfa Lawyers in Dubai, told XPRESS: “Many countries and cultures from where these expatriates relocate to the UAE do not require them to be married to have babies. But the UAE needs a valid marriage certificate to issue a birth certificate for a child being born in this jurisdiction.”
It is illegal in the UAE to have any sexual relationship without marriage, or having babies out of wedlock.
To procure a registered birth certificate, the parents need to present their passport copies with the visa page and their marriage certificate. Under UAE law, the hospital where a child is born issues the birth notification, following which the legal parents must register the birth with the Department of Preventive Medicine. After this, the parents have to get the document attested by the Foreign Office and subsequently go to their respective consulates to get the birth of their child registered as per their country’s requirements.
