It is necessary to Apply for Search Access before you can Request a Search.

Welcome to the Putative Father Registry

If you are a father wishing to register with the Putative Father Registry please click here.

If you are a person wishing to search the Putative Father Registry please click here.

For more info on fathers' rights please click here.

Si necessita ayuda de traducir, porfavor llame a Putative Father Registry para assistencia en Espanol 1-866-737-3237

A Putative Father is defined as a man who may be the child’s biological father, but who is not married to the child’s mother on or before the date of the child’s birth and has not established his paternity through legal proceedings.

As a service of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, the Putative Father Registry was created in 1994 and was designed to improve the process of notifying a biological father that his child may be the subject of and adoption proceeding. This was to protect the father’s rights and to protect those interested in adopting the child. The Putative Father Registry has five basic functions:

1. Facilitating the efforts of putative fathers to register with the Putative Father Registry
 
2. Maintaining confidentialy, the information provided by putative fathers
 
3. Facilitating the efforts of interested parties to search the Registry for putative fathers
 
4. Conducting searches of the Registry for interested parties to determine if a father is registered
 
5. Providing search results to interested parties

An interested party is defined as

· A child’s mother or father
 
· A child welfare agency to whom the mother has expressed an interest in making the adoption plan
 
· The potential adoptive parents
 
· The attorney for any one of the above parties