A situation must be avoided in which children whose parents fail to register their births suffer disadvantages because they do not have a family register. The government should strengthen its efforts to protect the rights of children.
A subcommittee of the Legislative Council has decided on a draft outline for revising the Civil Code to include a review of the "presumption of legitimacy system," which is used to presume the legal father of a child. The government aims to submit a bill to revise the Civil Code to the Diet by the end of this year.
The Civil Code stipulates that the legal father of a child born within 300 days of a couple's divorce is the divorced husband. If a woman gives birth to the child of a new partner soon after divorce, the woman's former husband is the legal father of the child on the family register. As a result, there have been many cases where women have not registered the births of their children, leaving the children without a family register.
