Reflection Upon Refusing To Register A Birth
In the shadow cast by the nationally reported case, regarding the recent high court decision that a father was not entitled to refuse to register the birth of his child, I have been asked my many people to express my comments, given that my wife and I successfully did so, almost a decade ago.
Having read the entire case, this is what the father argued:
1. That registration of the birth would make the child the property of the capricious state.
2. That doing so would be akin to entering the baby’s name on a ship’s manifest, on the high seas of the maritime jurisdiction, where they would become ‘lost at sea’.
3. That the Cestui Que Vie Act 1666 prescribes that after people and property are lost at sea for seven years they are considered legally dead, which allows the crown to seize control over them, under maritime salvage laws.
4. That we are all sovereign and bound under the common law to simply do no harm and that registration would be harmful to the child by turning him into a dead legal entity, subject to the control of the corrupt state.
Dismissed On Welfare Ground
The judge dismissed these passionately delivered arguments on the unsafe ground that it would cause harm to the child’s welfare if the birth was not registered, in that he would allegedly not be entitled to the rights and benefits of citizenship.
This, of course, my wife and I [and many others] have already proven to be nothing more than hearsay, given that no unregistered children of British nationals fail to obtain UK citizenship, a passport, free healthcare or an education.
In theory, the only thing lost is their parent’s right to claim state benefits, but I know that in at least one case benefits were still obtainable for an unregistered British child.
However, it must also be stressed that, whilst the father in the above case was undoubtedly right about the capricious state seeking legal jurisdiction to determine the life of his child, as well as the sovereignty of the people and the golden rule of common law, his argument was, nevertheless, fatally flawed.
This sadly resulted in the judge ruling that the state could register the birth as his child’s “institutional parent”, on the basis that the boy’s mother did not object to them doing so, despite also refusing to do it herself.
Critical Elements
When my wife and I were presented with the same argument the judge relied upon by the Registrar of Births and Deaths in 2010, having already created a Private Family Trust, the critical elements of the administrative process we used were:
a. A declaration of our superior guardianship rights, thereby preventing the state’s intervention as an “institutional parent”.
b. The granting into private trust of the information pertaining to our daughter’s birth, which precluded us from disclosing it to the state.
c. Averring that our child was entitled to all the rights and benefits of being born a British national, merely by virtue of being born on these shores to British parents.
Without those three elements in place, the father’s argument was never going to succeed, but it was also significantly hampered by the all too common misinterpretation of the Cestui Que Vie Act 1666.
A Cestui Que Vie Is Not A Trust
As a matter of fact, the act was brought into being because of mass lobbying on behalf of the widows of men who died fighting in wars overseas, whose property was being stolen from their wives and children by unscrupulous landlords.
From the Cestui Que Vie Act 1666:
“Cestui que vie remaining beyond Sea for Seven Years together and no Proof of their Lives, Judge in Action to direct a Verdict as though Cestui que vie were dead. If such person or persons for whose life or lives such Estates have beene or shall be granted as aforesaid shall remaine beyond the Seas or elsewhere absent themselves in this Realme by the space of seaven yeares together and noe sufficient and evident proofe be made of the lives of such person or persons respectively in any Action commenced for recovery of such Tenements by the Lessors or Reversioners in every such case the person or persons upon whose life or lives such Estate depended shall be accounted as naturally dead, And in every Action brought for the recovery of the said Tenements by the Lessors or Reversioners their Heires or Assignes, the Judges before whom such Action shall be brought shall direct the Jury to give their Verdict as if the person soe remaining beyond the Seas or otherwise absenting himselfe were dead….”
Widow’s Remedy
The act provided a remedy which prescribed that the property of a person who was presumed to be dead, after seven years overseas and no evidence of life being forthcoming, could be claimed by their surviving wives and children.
The ‘lost at sea’ were called Cestui Que Vies – beneficiaries of a Cestui Que Trust, which operated in their absence to protect and preserve their estate.
From Bouvier’s Law Dictionary:
CESTUI QUE TRUST, A barbarous phrase, to signify the beneficiary of an estate held in trust. He for whose benefit another person is enfeoffed or seised of land or tenements, or is possessed of personal property. The cestui que trust is entitled to receive the rents and profits of the land; he may direct such conveyances, consistent with the trust, deed or will, as he shall choose, and the trustee (q. v.) is bound to execute them: he may defend his title in the name of the trustee. 1 Cruise, Dig. tit. 12, c. 4, s. 4; vide Vin. Ab. Trust, U, W, X, and Y 1 Vern. 14; Dane’s Ab. Index, h. t.: 1 Story, Eq. Jur. 321, note 1; Bouv. Inst. Index, h. t.
CESTUI QUE VIE. He for whose life land is holden by another person; the latter is called tenant per auter vie, or tenant for another’s life. Vide Dane’s Ab. Index, h.t.”
Fatally Flawed
Bouvier’s definitions clearly establish that if a person [meaning the flesh and blood in this case, since a fiction has no life to lose] who has beneficial interest in property held on these shores, abandons that property for a period of at least seven years, they are considered legally dead.
This happened frequently during past centuries, when men were sent to foreign shores to fight unjust wars for despotic monarchs and their private vested interests.
The Cestui Que Vie [the owner of the abandoned property concerned] was considered legally dead for the purposes of proceedings for the recovery of such property, for and on behalf of the other beneficiaries to their estate.
More often than not, the claimants were the wives and children of casualties of war. The act also served much the same purposes in relation to the Fire of London of the same year, 1666.
However, whilst the act does pertain to the legal presumption that a real man or woman is dead, it can ONLY be presumed in the event that there has been no evidence of their life on these shores, for a period of at least seven years.
A Distinguishable Case
Nevertheless, in the event the father in the case above had argued that no unregistered British children of the parents who used our process [of a version of it] have suffered any loss of the rights to citizenship, a passport, free healthcare or education, his argument would have been sustainable, in spite of its flaws, since the judge only had the jurisdiction to rule what he did to protect the child’s welfare.
It must also be wholeheartedly stressed that the decision prohibiting the father from refusing to register the birth of his child is entirely distinguishable from our administrative process.
The Registrar elected not to challenge us in court because he could not prove we had not been endowed with superior guardianship rights by the Creator of the Universe; or that we were not prohibited from registering under private trust; or that not doing so would cause any harm or loss to our daughter.
Moreover, when the council’s welfare officer paid her last of three visits when she was three years old, she described her as “remarkably intelligent, charming and obviously thriving, in every sense”, which prompted the smiling woman to suggest that we might well be paving the way for the future of parenting.
Joie De Vivre
Almost seven years later, our home-educated daughter is already a prize-winning still life artist, who loves animals, the great outdoors, the books of Tolkien, playing the piano, swimming, gymnastics, trampolining, dance, drama, crafting, creative writing and chess.
She is also a gold, silver and bronze medalist in regional and national Taekwondo and Kick-boxing competitions, who is due to earn her first black belt on her tenth birthday.
In other words, she’s a an autodidactic, supremely confident, proper little Ninja, in peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual condition. It is both a constant joy and a privilege to be her father.
She lives and loves every moment of her life to the full, makes friends wherever she goes and can hold intelligent conversations with people of any and all descriptions, on a myriad of subjects.
Without doubt, she is living proof that the welfare of a British child is immaterial to whether their birth was registered, as everybody who has spent time in her wonderful company would testify.
