Originally Posted by
SteelCityBoy
Very useful thread - thank you to the OP for raising and others for response.
This answers a lot of questions for me - my wife and I are taking our child (who by then will be 8 months old) to YYZ in June to visit Grandparents. We are travelling all together outbound but on the return I will travel back alone and my wife will stay 2 weeks extra with the baby before returning to the UK.
I therefore anticipate that some sort of letter may be useful a) in boarding the aircraft in YYZ and b) at immigration in MAN upon return to the UK. The examples on here are primarily US / Canada based - can anyone point to a UK centric version or advise any sample wording they may have used in the past (or give ideas of what we should include).
Thanks.
The advice I posted above from the Home Office relates to non-British nationals entering the UK.
I'm assuming that you're all British citizens, yes? In which case you shouldn't have any concerns about wife plus baby entering the UK. For a start, consider how many single mothers there are in Britain. The border agency is hardly going to expect them to carry some sort of certification that they are the only legal parent. That could get quite offensive quite quickly.
I also know plenty of mothers that travel with their kids in and out of the UK and I'm not aware that any of them have even considered carrying a letter of authorization from the other parent, nor have I ever heard of them being questioned.
Now were it you travelling solo with a a baby then you that might be a different matter. Then you might find yourself face-to-face with some (well meaning) institutionalized sexism..