Dad split, mom wants grandparents to pay support

Dear Mrs Macaulay,

If a biological father refuses to pay child maintenance, can the grandparents pay for child support? The father has abandoned the child for three years now. Can child support still be claimed?

It is always so unfair to children when one of their parents abandons them and all their legal parental obligations. Let me deal with the question about the grandparents first, and get it out of the way. In your child’s situation, the biological father is alive and well, but has been refusing to pay his share for his child’s maintenance. The first and primary legal obligation is on the parents of the child; it is not a matter of choice which would enable either parent to just decide they are not going to provide any maintenance for their child. The law is clear. The Maintenance Act imposes the legal obligation on every parent, as far as they are capable, to maintain their dependent children. So the grandparents do not come into the frame unless the parent is not capable of contributing in any way to the maintenance of their child. This is not so in your child’s case, as the father selfishly and irresponsibly has merely refused to meet his legal duty to maintain his child as far as he is capable.

So now to deal with your final question, whether you can still apply for maintenance. Yes, of course you can and you must, and I must add that you should have done so before now. You have been too lenient with this deadbeat father to the detriment of your child. You must go to the Family Court for your parish with your child’s birth certificate and a list of all your child’s expenses, which must be proportionally worked out. If it is you and the child only living together, then your child’s share would be one-half of all costs. If there are four of you in your household for example, then your child’s share would be one-fourth, and so forth. So work out the proportions for the cost of housing (rental or mortgage); cost of electricity; cost of water; telephone charges; cost of food; cost of general household purchases for cleaning, shared transportation or separate; entertainment costs, etc. Then expenditures for your child which are solely the child’s, for example lunch money, pocket money, cost of hair care, general clothing and footwear, uniforms and school shoes, socks, underwear, sports wear and all this entails, any extra lessons, transportation; and then any school fees, and all educational, medical, dental and/or optical expenses should all be halved.

You must go and make your application, to have your child provided for, as he/she is entitled, by the biological father as the law dictates. You owe this to your child, to obtain the legal order which the law provides for all children’s benefit and protection. And please do not let this scoundrel of a father get away with his selfishness.

Please ask the court to order him to pay his maintenance to the court’s office, as his payments can then be more efficiently policed and action taken against him for any breaches he commits.

Do not help this man to continue to disrespect your child’s rights, take him to court. The Family Court is there to help parents like you when the other parent does not meet their legal and moral obligations to their child. It’s also at no financial cost to you. Do it please, and quickly.

A very happy Christmas to you all.

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.