In France, I remember reading this, when a child is born outside of marriage, the mother is not legally entitled to the birth certificate. Also, the mother cannot legally place the father's name on the document and she cannot legally demand support payments unless paternity is established. The only way that the father's name gets on the birth certificate, would be if he himself places his own name there. Reason being is that, historically, children born outside of marriage -- and their mothers -- could be treated differently on support payments and inheritance claims on the father. Legally, he would not have to give any financial support for them. The only way that paternity would be established for a child born outside of a marriage, and for the mother to get any financial support payments -- the father must sign the papers himself making the acknowledgement, establishing paternity and giving the child rights to inherit assets and the mother rights to child support payments. All this needs to happen before the child is 2 yrs old though. Or the child must wait until they are 18.
In France -- the only reason why anyone would ever need or use a birth certificate would be to establish paternity, to demand child support payments and claim an inheritance on the father. That would be the main reason why anyone would use such a document there -- to make claims on the father. Rarely for anything else.
Otherwise, the document itself is very hard for anyone to obtain. Normally, most people don't bother to do it -- they use other methods to do whatever they need to do in the normal course of things.
When a child is born outside of marriage in France, the father must place his name on the birth certificate by the time the child is 2 yrs. old to establish paternity and to give the child the right to equal treatment on inheritance (the same rights as any children born 'legitimately') -- if the father does not do that, the child must wait until age 18 to make any such claim of paternity. If paternity is not establishe by the time the child is 2 yrs. old, he or she would have to wait until they are 18 and then go thru the notaries and it would be very difficult then also. The mother is not legally entitled to such documents and would not be allowed to do anything (under the law).
This would have been the case with PA, except he was already giving generous support payments since shortly after the child was born and had already signed the birth certificate too.
