Perinatal bereavement: parents will now be able to give a surname to stillborn children

Giving his name to his child, even if he was born lifeless, will now be possible.

The Official Journal published this Tuesday the article of a law allowing parents to name their stillborn children, to register them officially within their family, and to overcome perinatal bereavement.

This text was tabled in December 2020 by the centrist Senator Anne-Catherine Loisier.

“The child born without life is not nothing.

It belongs to the family ”and it is a question of“ not adding oblivion to the unbearable tragedy ”, underlined in the hemicycle the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, during the vote of the law by Parliament last month.

An entry which "has no legal effect"

The article of law provides that it will be possible to include in the act of the child born without life "at the request of the father and mother, the first name (s) of the child as well as a name which can be either the name of the father, or the name of the mother, or their two names joined in the order chosen by them within the limit of one last name for each of them.

"

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This registration of first and last names "has no legal effect", it is added in the text of the law.

A way to avoid any imbroglio in matters of filiation and inheritance.

The law will also apply to stillborn infants in the past

Until now, the law already allowed to give a first name to a child born without life as soon as the pregnancy exceeded the 15th week, thanks to a circular of 2009. No family name could however be attached to it, because an individual was born. 'obtains legal personality only when it is "born, alive and viable".

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This bill may also apply to children born lifeless in the past.

"The documents already drawn up can be completed" with a surname, indicated the Minister of Justice.

A forthcoming decree should also make it possible to complete the family record book.

The stillbirth rate was 8.5 per 1,000 total births in 2019 in France, according to the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics

(Drees).

A figure which however takes into account stillbirths both by spontaneous fetal death and voluntary termination of pregnancy.