Why it matters
Parentage is not merely an entry on a birth certificate. Maintenance, inheritance, parental rights, and where one parent is a foreign national the child’s citizenship, all depend on it.
So a question that looks personal has many practical consequences, sometimes decades later, usually on an inheritance.
Acknowledgement
The way a father recognises a child not born within a marriage. It is done through an established procedure and has consequences that are not easily undone.
It can be challenged by certain people within a certain period. So if you have doubts, this is not something to leave until things settle.
Challenging paternity
There is a rule that surprises people: a child born within a marriage, or shortly after it ends, is treated as the husband’s child. Even where everyone knows otherwise.
That position changes only through the proper procedure and within time. If the period passes, the entry stands regardless of the truth, and it produces consequences on inheritance.
If the child was born abroad
Then the birth record has to be entered in the Bulgarian registers first, and only then are questions of parentage dealt with. See reissuing foreign civil records.
If one parent is a foreign national, say so at the start. That changes both the procedure and the consequences, including for the child’s documents.
A conversation without judgment
These cases come with stories people find hard to tell.
I am not here to judge you. I am here to work out what can be done, within what time, and with what consequences. The more precisely you tell me, the more use I will be.
What I will need
The child’s birth certificate. The marriage certificate or the document ending the marriage, if there was one. Everything already filed with or received from institutions on the question. Any court proceedings too.
This page provides general information and does not constitute legal advice on any specific case. Rights and deadlines depend on the facts and the applicable law.