Urgent!! Change surname of my son.

12th March 2010

Good Morning,

This is Samantha Fernandez. I’d like to discuss about and get some advice on a rather ridiculous situation that I am facing. To begin with, I got pregnant before marriage at the age of 18 years. Since both our families knew that we were in love they did not mind me keeping the baby (also, abortion being a mortal sin in Christianity). We had decided to get married in court but unfortunately my fiancé (Lionel, 19 years) was not of legal age.

I gave birth the next year to a beautiful and healthy baby boy. My problem starts when we got the birth certificate from Maha-Nagar Pallika it stated that we are the parents of the new born. My mother under the impression that we were very young, unmarried and will not be able to take care of the child, made another certificate from the same Maha- Nagar Pallika with their names as the parents (Grace and Joe Dsouza). I allowed this to happen; therefore we now have 2 birth certificates:

1. Jude Fernandez s/o Lionel and Samantha Fernandez;

and the other one is

2. Jude D’Souza s/o Joe and Grace D’Souza

What makes matter worse is that my parents have been in Kuwait for quite some time. Both of them have been working there. So they decided to take us along with them. Since I and Lionel are still not legally married, my father was the only stable head in the family who could support my son. They had to use the 2nd birth certificate to make his passport.

Now that a couple of years have gone by, Jude is 2 years old and I am 21 years and Lionel being a year older than I am; we are of legal age and decided to get court/ civil married. We are capable enough to support our son and get our family back on track. Moreover we are planning to migrate to the U.S. and want to take Jude along with us.

We want to change the parents name and surname on his passport. Is it possible to get this done? Another thing is that Jude’s passport was made in Goa. Can I go ahead and make a new passport with the original birth certificate in Mumbai?

I’d like to know what the chances are. If it can be done, how would I go about the procedure? What do I need to do? Please advice.

I have spoken to many people regarding this issue but did not get a definite answer/solution. All that people tell me is that it is a tricky situation. But that does not help me.

Hope that I get a positive solution from the people who read this. Awaiting your response.

Thanks and regards,

Samantha Fernandez