What is the Minimum legal age in the uk to trace a estranged parent?

[niteowl40]

my wife left me several years ago and my daughter wants to know trace her mother she left when my daughter was 5yrs old she knows i am not happy with this decistion and she keeps saying she will wait till she is legal age so what is the legal age in the uk to trace her mother

[Trish 125]

!8 in England, 16 in Scotland

[FrankGalvin]

You have my sympathy but you should think very carefully about trying to persuade your daughter not to contact her mother. Her curiosity for answers and the need for her mother are no slight on you. She will resent you if you try to stop her looking for her mother. Help her, or at least, do not try to stop her, and she will always know and understand all you have done for her in the years where her mother was absent.

[fredpuli47]

niteowl, let's face it, you daughter is not going to stop wanting to trace her mother, is she? Not ever? And when she does, what is she to think of you for standing in her way, the more so if, when she does, she finds that her mother has died, she can never meet her mother again and has only whatever memories she has as at 5 years old. That would be a terrible thing to live with.

What reason to you have for denying her? Was her mother a murderess? Drug addict? Or did she simply leave you, say, for someone else? Or is simply that you are still angry at her mother ? Whatever the reason, the woman is still her mother ! As Frank says, your daughter will always know and appreciate all you have done for her. You may not think that list of good things will be improved by addding 'My father always stopped me meeting my own mother!"