Ireland Forum

LOTGS
Joined 2016
Posts: 5

7 years ago

Irish Foreign Births Register difficulty

7 years ago

Hi everyone,

I don't know if anyone would be able to offer advice on my issue here, but I'm having trouble contacting the relevant authorities so thought I'd see what such a knowledgeable bunch might have to say!

I'm a UK citizen currently trying to register on the Irish Foreign Births Register for reasons that are probably obvious, and have hit a problem with the documentation. My grandfather was born in Ireland but went missing from our family when my father was only young, around the time of divorcing from my grandmother. After hours of research I've managed to find out that he later remarried and died in London. So now I have (or at least have located) his birth certificate, marriage certificate (to my grandmother), remarriage certificate and death certificate. According to the FBR webpage, the only other piece of documentation I need is his divorce decree absolute, but for everything I've tried, this can't be found. The family doesn't already hold a copy of it, no one still living remembers when (or even for definite where) it took place, and I can't find a record of it in publicly available registers. I've also paid £65 to the Central Family Court in London for a 10 year search of their divorce register (covering the years we're quite confident it must have taken place in), which returned nothing.

So my question is- does anyone have any idea if this one document is as essential as the advice implies? My understanding is that such documents are needed to 'join the dots' of a person's life to ensure it is the same individual (particularly necessary in the event of a change of name), but he of course never changed name, and it seems that details on the other documents do a pretty comprehensive job of proving they are all pertaining to the same person. What's more, my father's birth certificate obviously shows he is the child of my grandfather and grandmother (who the first marriage certificate shows married each other); once this link of citizenship to the next generation is made, isn't what happened to my grandfather afterwards largely irrelevant?

I know that the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are the only ones that can give me a definitive answer, but while I try to get this answer I thought I'd see what anyone else with knowledge of such issues knows.

Thanks in advance for any help that anyone can give!

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