A video on Facebook, seen thousands of times, claims that signing a birth certificate and registering a birth means a child has been signed over to the state and creates a “fictitious legal entity”.
The video goes on to claim that the “legal entity” can be separated from the “flesh and blood” person, meaning obligations such as attending court when summoned are optional. Full Fact could find no example of this defence ever being successful in a UK court.
Part of the video appears to be taken from the 2013 documentary which focuses on the “strawman” theory.
The strawman theory has often been invoked by people who describe themselves as “freemen-on-the-land” (or “freemen-of-the-land”).
The strawman theory, in this context, describes a separation between a “real” person (that is, the physical person) and their legal or corporate identity, which some people claim can be denied.
Adherents to this theory believe that the roots of this secondary legal identity can be traced back to the birth certificate or official birth registration.
All births in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must be registered within 42 days of the child being born. This can either be done in the hospital after the birth, or at a local registry office. In Scotland a birth must be registered within 21 days.
It is a permanent record of a child’s existence and means the government recognises a child’s identity, which helps authorities dedicate the right resources to public services such as education and health. Having (and registering) a child could also potentially impact your tax, benefits and services run by your local council.
In June 2019 a man who refused to register his son’s birth because he did not want him to be “controlled by the state” lost a high court case.
The judge involved in the case ruled the council had the right to step in as the child’s “institutional parent” to register the birth “in order that he may be recognised as a citizen and entitled to the benefits of such citizenship”.
There have been a number of UK court cases in which defendants have attempted to represent themselves as freemen-of-the-land. In 2017 a Somerset man was sent to the court cells for contempt for refusing to confirm his identity during a sentencing hearing after being convicted of breaching a planning order, while in 2018 a man was ejected from Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court after refusing to stand for the magistrates.