>
A mother has revealed the ordeal she faced to have her deceased partner registered as the father of her child after he tragically died two days after he was born.
Beccy Hunter said all Jamie Hunter, 38, had ‘always wanted’ was to be a father and that he was delighted to be able to support his daughter Harper-May when she was born in May 2020 before she died of kidney cancer.
But the grief-stricken mother of six endured a two-year battle to get Jamie’s name recorded on her daughter’s birth certificate.
The lengthy legal process involved taking DNA samples from the body of Jamie and Harper-May, who was then three weeks old, and Beccy had to prove she was a fit mother.
The mother said it had been “hell” to change Harper-May’s birth certificate, but she couldn’t even look at the original version without Jamie’s name.
Beccy said that being a father was all Jamie “ever wanted” and that she was determined to let him meet his daughter.
Beccy finally obtained a birth certificate in Jamie’s name in July 2022, more than two years after Harper-May’s birth.
Beccy had to endure a two-year battle to have Jamie’s name recorded on her daughter’s birth certificate, as the couple were not married.
Beccy had given birth early to ensure that her partner, Jamie Hunter, could meet their daughter before she died.
But Jamie’s death, which occurred before the birth could be registered, and the fact that the couple were not married, meant that her name was not on the birth certificate.
If we had been married, they would have just put your name on the certificate. It’s completely wrong. We thought about getting married, but everything happened very quickly with his illness,” Beccy explained.
“There just wasn’t time to arrange a wedding, I was eight months pregnant and our goal was to get him there to see Harper born.”
“He gave me a ring two days before he died and I changed my name to Hunter so Harper would have the same name when he grew up.”
The mother-of-six was determined to have her daughter’s birth certificate say who her father was and launched a lengthy legal process, costing £3,500, to make the change.
‘For Jamie, being a father was all he ever wanted. Why should Harper grow up looking at her birth certificate with her father as a blank?
Beccy, who had changed her last name from Flint just before Jamie died, had to go to lawyers and arrange for DNA samples to be collected from her deceased partner and their newborn baby.
The mother-of-six was determined to have her daughter’s birth certificate say who her father was and launched a lengthy legal process, costing £3,500, to make the change.
Jamie Hunter was able to see his daughter Harper-May two days before she died of kidney cancer, after Beccy Hunter gave birth early.
Beccy Hunter was delighted that Jamie Hunter, 38, was given the chance to briefly hold baby Harper-May when she was born in May 2020, as being a father was “all he ever wanted.”
Harper-May, now two years old, visits her father Jamie’s grave. She met her father two days before he died of cancer, having been born prematurely.
This involved Jamie’s body being moved from a funeral home to Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, meaning she was unable to go see him for three weeks.
Beccy then had to meet with social services and appear in court to explain why she wanted Jamie on the birth certificate.
Beccy, who is from Birmingham, said: “It’s been hell, it makes me so angry that we had to go through this.” If we had been married, they would have taken it as gospel that he was the father.
‘It’s just because the law is so out of date. Today, many people are not married when they have children.
Having already spoken to the registry office, Beccy knew that naming Jamie as the father was not going to be an easy process.
Beccy said: ‘I had to arrange for a company in London to obtain a DNA sample from Jamie. It meant I couldn’t go see him at the undertaker for weeks in case he contaminated the body.
The mother explained that the DNA would have to have been taken from Jamie’s brother if it hadn’t been taken from him. He had to be rushed to Heartlands Hospital to have it done because it’s rarely done.
Beccy said: ‘It wasn’t nice to Harper either. She was only three weeks old and they came in, all masked, to take the sample from her. But that was only part of the saga.
Beccy was then interviewed by social services, which she found difficult: ‘They wanted to know if Jamie wanted to be a father and I had to show that I was a fit mother. I don’t know what difference that made, but this was all about consent.
‘When an unmarried couple registers a birth, they go to the registry office together and in this way the father consents to be named on the birth certificate. The difficulty here was that Jamie wasn’t here to demonstrate his consent.
The wait for his case to be heard in court was delayed due to the delays. When she was finally able to attend, Beccy said she broke down in tears in front of the judges.
Knowing that her partner Jamie would miss many important events in her daughter Harper’s life, mother Beccy Hunter thought it was important to have it listed on the birth certificate.
When Beccy was finally able to attend court to get Jamie’s name on the birth certificate, she said she broke down in tears in front of the judges.
Beccy said: ‘I had to go to court and swear on the Bible, standing in front of three judges to persuade them to put Jamie’s name on the birth certificate. It was so stressful that I was in pieces. I had never been in court before, I felt like a criminal.
‘Why did I have to stand in front of a judge when I had done nothing wrong? I spent most of the time crying and the judges, these big men who are used to dealing with a lot of criminal cases, ended up crying too.
“After I explained what it meant to me and Harper, they looked at each other and said, ‘We’re all on board and we’re going to pass this.'”
But that wasn’t the end of the process, as Beccy still had to apply for another birth certificate.
He finally had the new version, complete with Jamie’s name, in July 2022, more than two years after Harper-May’s birth on May 11, 2020.
Beccy said: ‘I couldn’t believe it when I finally had the full certificate. He had not been able to look at the original where it said father and there was only a blank space. It was wrong.
‘The whole process is wrong and we have to raise awareness to try to change it. I feel that if I can help someone in the same unfortunate situation as me, then it will be worth it.’