estranged family.. fbr yay or nay?

so this is just a crap situation as far as i can tell.
emailed dfa a few years ago and never got a reply.

short and sweet as i can make it:
grandfather, born in ireland in the 40s. estranged from family in the 70s, presumed dead due to his lifestyle.

his daughter, my mother born in england. now also estranged for the last ten years and no interest in contacting her and i know for a fact she doesnt have any useful info on her dad anyway.

her daughter, me born in england. wishing to preserve my human rights and rights as an eu citizen. also would like to discover my irish heritage but having only known england my whole life it makes me feel a bit of an imposter and so i have put this off for almost two decades already :/


anyway, from what i gather its my legal right or whatever to claim irish citizenship, but it lies with me to show proof of this.. but that seems a bit tricky when the person whose documents are needed has not been seen in 40+ years. and even if my mothers documents could be used.. that would be quite a horrible ordeal that might not prove fruitful if she doesnt want to play ball.

not sure what my options are at this point.

so, yeah. thats pretty much it. on a scale of sod all to snowballs, what are the chances?

Seems like you could do this by digging up birth certs without the people involved. It might be a good idea to talk to a solicitor.

To clarify: "Birth, marriage, adoption, civil partnership and death certificates are public records, meaning anybody can access or apply for them."

Apply at http://lifeevents.hse.ie/ . https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/b ... death.html could be useful. You'll need at least a few bits of info on the people whose certs you want.

You will have to contact your mother as you'll need a current copy of her driver license or passport for your application. Someone posted a very similar situation to yours in the much longer FBR thread you will find in this forum and there were several creative suggestions as to how to get a copy of the ID from an estranged person. For me, I just waited until my father died and then I was able to use his death certificate rather than having to make contact with him, but I did have to wait nearly 10 years from the time I started gathering documents until his death. None of the other documents you will need require you to be in touch with your mother, as long as you have some basic information about your grandfather you are probably in decent shape to find his records especially as they are fairly recent as far as the FBR process goes. Have you begun any cursory searches using Ancestry or FamilySearch?

thank you for the replies. put off checking until today, fear of answers.

all the replies made me realise i forgot a big important thing. i don't even know the name of my grandad.
it just never came up, it was made clear he was not a nice person and so he was never spoken about. my nan had remarried long before i was born and my mum used my nan's maiden surname, so i really have little idea what his first or last name is, or was.

pondering on it, i might know his first name.. surname however is a complete mystery.

i will check out ancestry.com and the like and maybe i can find my nan and his marriage record..

thank you for the ideas!

ugh2k19 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 24, 2019 7:47 am

thank you for the replies. put off checking until today, fear of answers.

all the replies made me realise i forgot a big important thing. i don't even know the name of my grandad.
it just never came up, it was made clear he was not a nice person and so he was never spoken about. my nan had remarried long before i was born and my mum used my nan's maiden surname, so i really have little idea what his first or last name is, or was.

pondering on it, i might know his first name.. surname however is a complete mystery.

i will check out ancestry.com and the like and maybe i can find my nan and his marriage record..

thank you for the ideas!

His name should be on your mother's birth certificate so that's probably your best place to start. You can obtain that without having to make contact with her, and you may be able to find that information on FamilySearch.org or Ancestry without having to get the official document. I found searching for my grandparents' marriage information to be nearly impossible even when I had most of the details and in fact, I never was able to find the record. Good luck and let us know how you get on!