Birth of a Child
The mutual rights and obligations of parents and children arise from the filiation of children which is ascertained pursuant to procedure provided by law. A child cannot have more than two parents.
The woman who gives birth to a child is the mother of the child. The man by whom a child is conceived is the father of the child. It is deemed that a child is conceived by a man who is married to the mother, who has acknowledged his paternity or whose paternity has been established by court. The court does not identify an anonymous or non-partner donor whose sperm cells have been used for artificial insemination as the child's father.
In artificial insemination, the child is considered to be descended from the parent on the basis provided in the Artificial Insemination and Embryo Protection Act.
If the filiation of the child hasn’t been identified according to the law, the information about the child’s parent will be left unentered to the population register, i.e. this information is not on the birth certificate.
The birth is registered at an Estonian vital statistics office if the child is born in Estonia, the child’s parent’s place of residence is in Estonia or the parent of the child has Estonian citizenship. The birth is registered in Estonia in case the birth hasn’t been registered in a foreign country.