Adoption/ British Citizenship / British Passport

**murphyj69** · 15th Aug 2018, 14:25

I've run into the same nightmare now as I adopted my Thai step daughters in the UK and eagerly gave them my surname as my wife had two different passports with UK and Thai surnames in 2013 before the rules changed. We applied for the girls' UK passports last year and were told that we had to adopt the girls in Thailand or provide proof that we couldn't legally do that (the passport office don't consider the difficulty of doing that it seems). We withdrew as we thought it would be solved when the girls' Thai passports expire in May 2019. Sadly I discovered this week that even expired passports will stop you gaining a UK passport if the names don't match.

I wish I could have seen this thread before I adopted in my name. It now seems a hopeless unfixable problem. Some sites suggest my wife could change the birth cert in Thailand without adoption being necessary but after reading this it seems not.

The Thai embassy totally ignored me too but did send an email similar to the one described above which was dismissed by the UKPO.

**steady** · 15th Aug 2018, 16:17

Reread post #20, we got our adopted daughter her UK passport at the same time as she has her Thai passport. Both with different surnames. Pain to do but once in the UKPO system things appeared to work better. Good luck.

**leshemp** · 17th Aug 2018, 20:01

Good luck with everything, we did not change the surname so it matched the Thai passport, applied for the British passport on line .
The passport arrived no problem. I think its very lucky if you succeed in gaining passports with different surnames.

**steady** · 18th Aug 2018, 07:52

Leshemp, Are you talking about a child adopted in the UK? I don't understand how you can manage to use the Thai surname if the child was adopted in the UK? We had to use the name which matched the British birth certificate that you get with the adoption papers.

**leshemp** · 18th Aug 2018, 21:37

Originally Posted by steady

Leshemp, Are you talking about a child adopted in the UK? I don't understand how you can manage to use the Thai surname if the child was adopted in the UK? We had to use the name which matched the British birth certificate that you get with the adoption papers.

Hi, yes I adopted my step daughter in the UK last year . At the adoption hearing we chose to keep her surname as shown in her Thai passport, so the issue applying for a UK passport would not be a problem.

**steady** · 18th Aug 2018, 22:08

Makes sense now, we had lived together for about 4 years before the adoption and our daughter was already known by our family surname at school, doctor etc so we never even thought about that as an option. That plus the passport issue had not even been thought about.

**leshemp** · 19th Aug 2018, 08:52

Originally Posted by steady

Makes sense now, we had lived together for about 4 years before the adoption and our daughter was already known by our family surname at school, doctor etc so we never even thought about that as an option. That plus the passport issue had not even been thought about.

I would have loved to use our family name, but research about the issues with passports was the determining factor, keep her original surname.