He wants to take my baby
DEAR MRS MACAULAY,
I am a Jamaican citizen who had my son in the US. His father is Jamaican by birth and a citizen in the US for over 30 years. He pushed for me to go to the US to have the baby, where he told me he had insurance and stuff sorted out. When I got there, I discovered all that was a lie. He wanted me to lie to get insurance.
I gave birth to the baby and I have a lot of medical bills up there. Now I’m back in Jamaica and he is threatening to take the baby away from me.
What can I do to get joint or sole custody?
I would suggest that you go as soon as possible to the Immigration Office (if you are in Kingston, this is the first floor of the Passport Office on Constant Spring Road) and apply to register your son as a Jamaican citizen. You see, as you are a citizen of Jamaica and his mother, he is entitled to citizenship through you, his mother. You must take a certified copy of your birth certificate and your son’s with you when you go to do the application. As he is a US citizen by birth and by descent, he should have no trouble with dual citizenship.
Anyway, how do you go about being the legal custodian of your son?
You should go to the Family Court for your parish or to the one which serves your parish, or to the Resident Magistrate’s Court serving your parish if there is no Family Court. Take a certified copy of your son’s birth certificate with you and your identification — driver’s licence, national ID card or your passport. There in the court’s office, and with the assistance of the clerk of courts, make your application for ‘custody, care and control’ of your son. Your ability to apply for maintenance would depend on whether your son’s father resides in a state which has reciprocal arrangements with Jamaica with regard to the enforcement of its orders here and Jamaican court orders there.
You must apply for ‘care and control’ as well as for ‘custody’. The care and control order will give you the legal right to have your son live with you. ‘Custody’ will give you the right to make all important decisions about your son’s upbringing. If you are granted ‘sole custody’ — which in the circumstances I advise you to apply for — you would be able to make all the important decisions without any input or interference from his father. You must decide what you apply for, but remember that since he has threatened to take your son away, the father must not have free and unsupervised access to him. The danger of him running away with the child is too strong, from what you say. If the court wishes to give him access, you must ensure that it is ‘supervised access’.
Remember that your application will have to be served on the father. The clerk of courts will, of course, explain all this to you and advise you, if necessary, how to go about such service.
I hope you can, from what I have written, understand the steps you need to take to secure your son’s residence and upbringing by you and with you alone making all decisions for him.
God bless you both.
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. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.DISCLAIMER:The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.
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. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.
DISCLAIMER:
The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.
