Hello - not sure that this is the right forum but my questions relate to children being born overseas. Could anyone point me to the right forum?
thanks

Heres where you start.
http://ukinusa.fco.gov.uk/en/help-fo...-registration/

Would depend on which country you're referring to.

The Mother and child are in Thailand. Baby born in Thailand. Me - Im British. She is naturalised French.

Sorry I figured you were in US
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-...tering-a-birth Try this one. Lots to read.

Why would somebody want to register a birth like this? It costs a lot (£100) and seems to not provide much functional benefit, at least at first glance...

'cause he asked?
Why do you care about the price he's not asking you to pay for it. In this case it would be beneficial to the child as the original birth certificate will not be in English, they are in Thailand, so it'd be good for ID and UK passports etc.

Exactly. Much easier to use than a local certificate, probably easier to replace, constitutes proof of British citizenship, and so on.

As the mother is French, the child is probably also a French citizen so the same thing should be looked at with the French authorities (proof of French citizenship + French passport).

many thanks for all comments. Valuable advice thankyou. Yes the Thai authorities are a nightmare as are Thai documents.

I am not interested in the cost alone, but am interested in the benefits of doing a registration. And the cost of the application is an issue, especially if the benefits are low. It is fine if you are not be interested in cost issues, but I am and so I asked the question.

The reason I asked my original question is that GRO page is pretty negative about the benefits. It says more about why the certificate is NOT required, and in fact says "There is no requirement for a consular birth registration to be done for any birth that has occurred overseas." It is definitely not required for a British passport, and the text says "The original birth certificate issued by the authorities in the country in which the birth took place, along with a notarised translation if necessary, is sufficient for all purposes in the UK (including passport applications)." It also is really clear that you can not even register in Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa and Ireland even if you want to.

Is the main issue ease of replacement for local birth certificates from countries where replacements or duplicate copies are particularly problematic?

And language too, I think it cost quite a bit for an official translation of things like birth certificates Thai sounds like one that is hard to get and getting replacements in the future could be difficult. We did it even thought the kids are US born, it can take a year to get a replacement even here, and so the kids have consular registrations just to make things easier, that way they won't need to try to find my or Dh UK birth certificates either.