Heather raised a point about whether a child born outside wedlock would be given the father or the mother's name. I don't know about the norm but the following is an example of what happened in my family. My In-laws were not married when any of their three children were registered. For the first two the father was away in the RAF and so they had to take the mother's name until the return of the father, they were then re-registered. The third child was born and registered when the father was available to accept the child as his own. This caused quite a lot of upset when my sister-in-law found that she was in fact registered under Ward when she had always used Sinclair. Had she known the system she could have looked further and found that she had in fact been registered twice. Until I found my husbands siblings I was unaware of this. Has anyone else come across similar examples? By the way my In-laws did eventually marry - a week after we did!! Joyce Sinclair Ph: 0401 670 656 joyces@iprimus.com.au Perth, Western Australia