by Tony Rucinski, Coalition for Marriage
Last Saturday, we looked at the crisis in fathers’ rights with Dr Bruce Newsome. Now the Court of Appeal has weighed in – and its finding should be of interest to every supporter of real marriage.
In Re J, Re M and Re P [2026] EWCA Civ 344, Sir Andrew McFarlane – the President of the Family Division – ruled that only a child’s biological father can acquire parental responsibility by being named on a birth certificate. The birth certificate does not create fatherhood. Biology does.
In one of the three cases, a man who had loved and raised a child as his own for two years – who genuinely believed he was the father – was told the law had never recognised him as such. Not that his recognition had been taken away. That it had never existed.
Sir Andrew put it plainly: “only the individual whose sperm has fertilised an ovum so as to create the embryo from which the living child has developed can be regarded, in law, as that child’s father”.
If biological fatherhood is foundational – and the Court of Appeal has now confirmed that it is – then the institution that binds biological fathers to their children matters more than ever. That institution is marriage. And it is in freefall.