Mom wants to change child’s name from deadbeat dad’s
Dear Mrs Macaulay,
I have a son who is six years old. The court has ordered his father to pay child support over five years now, and he hasn’t paid a cent to date. He has no idea or interest in how the child is fed, sheltered or clothed, yet he lives in close proximity to us. I am struggling financially as I am unemployed, therefore my family provides everything for my son and I. I would like to change my son’s name and give him my family name because the father is not worthy for my son to bear his name. This is something I have thought long and hard about, and my family is in full support of it. How should I go about having it done?
Mother, you must answer this question: what have you done about your son’s father’s disobedience of the court’s order? What actions have you taken to ensure that he pays over what the court ordered him to pay for the maintenance of your son? Did you go back to the court? Since you have not mentioned anything about any of these questions, I am forced to conclude that you did nothing about his failure.
If I am right in my assumption, you have acted irresponsibly and contrary to your son’s best interest. In addition, your conclusion that you must change your son’s name from his father’s to that of your family’s is contrary to your son’s human rights.
It was your duty to identify and name his father after his birth and thereby give him his right to an identity and name. But you have no right to take this away from him. You have failed to do what the law says you can do when the father failed to obey the court order to provide maintenance for his son as ordered.
What you ought to do and do quickly is to go back to the court and report the fact of his disobedience of the order and make an application for a default summons to be issued against him. In this way, he will be brought before the court when he will have an opportunity to explain why he disobeyed the court order, what steps he will take to obey it, and when and how he will pay up all the arrears for the last five years.
Additionally, he would also have to pay the current periodic payments as they become due while paying off the arrears. If he fails to pay any of the arrears, he would go to jail.
This, then, is what you ought to do as a responsible mother who acts in her child’s best interests. Again, I say that you have no right to change your son’s name from his father’s because he is a deadbeat dad who owes five years of maintenance payments. The burden and duty was and is on you to have acted. Yet you have taken no legal steps to have him pay up what is due for your son.
I know of no basis or reason in law by which your son’s name can be changed because his father has neglected to provide support for him. I also do not know of any instance of this being permitted.
So do your duty and go to the court and utilise the law to obtain what was ordered on your application for maintenance for your son. Good luck.
Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published.
