Dad says mom’s alienating kids

DEAR MRS MACAULAY

My baby’s mom walked out of the house with my boys after 10 years together, and said she’s moving on. I was the sole provider for the household for 10 years until she finished school one year before she left. I was put on child maintenance six months after she left. I’ve always been a good dad. I went on vacation and she said I didn’t tell her I was leaving, so she went to my job and created problems. I was forced to leave the job, and fell behind on support. I was threatened with being locked up. I tried to give her money and asked her to sign for it, and she declined. She has broken one of my son’s phone and blocked me from the other. I bought both phones. I have sent clothes on multiple occasions and she has threatened to burn them and told the kids don’t touch them. I have been having a hard time being a father. She has totally turned my kids against me and told the kids to “block that mf”. I would like to know how to get visitation and custody. My children have suffered enough at the hands of their mom. It takes two parents to raise kids. Everything that I tell my kids as far as education she tells them the opposite so now they don’t want to read or do school work. This can’t go on like this anymore. I need help.

I am extremely sorry to learn about what the mother of your children did, and is doing. I am disgusted with her conduct and her lack of proper care of her children and her breaches of their rights. She is ignoring all their rights, and that she must always act in their best interests, and she is ignoring the fact that her conduct will be having and will definitely have detrimental effects on their emotional and psychological development. Your children have the legal and human rights to know you and to have father/son relationships with you, and you have the right to have such relationships with your sons.

From what you said about being put on child maintenance by, I assume, the Family Court, it seems odd that the court did not make any order for you to have access (what you refer to as visitation) to your children. The judge should have made such orders and I would suggest that you go to the court and ask for a certified copy of the orders which were made on her application for maintenance. You would just have to give them her name, yours, and the date you both were in court when the maintenance order was made. Judges always ask in such cases if the father is seeing his children and if the answer is “no”, then access orders must and are made.

When you get the certified copy of the orders from the Family Court, if there are orders in it about your access to your children, then you must there and then inform the clerk that your children’s mother has denied you access or contact with your children and you want to apply to the court to make sure that you get access to them.

Also, especially if the orders have no access order listed, you must, there and then, tell the clerk that you want to make applications for joint custody and specific and regular access to your children.

All applications made in the Family Court are free, and a clerk will assist you and draw up your application and the court bailiff can serve your application and affidavit on your sons’ mother on your behalf for her to attend court. Make sure that you ask for a copy of each for yourself and attend court on the date and do not be afraid to talk and tell the judge everything. If you can afford to get a lawyer to appear for you, this would be good and would make it assured that the judge is told all the relevant details of the mother’s disgusting and harmful conduct towards the children. But remember that you have a right to speak yourself to the court and be listened to by the judge.

Again I say, do not be afraid. Go there and have them help you to file your application for joint custody and specific times for your access to your sons, and the exact times/days/parts of school holidays, etc, they will spend with you.

There is help in the Family Court for you. Your problem and others were the reasons the Family Court was set up and that there are no monetary charges to have applications filed and heard there. So please use what the law has provided to help parents like you.

I trust that you shall go as quickly as possible and get your children’s rights and your rights established in court orders upon your applications. There is no doubt that you would succeed as long as you apply and speak out clearly and truthfully about all the mother has done and is doing in actively denying your right as a father and the rights of your sons. Do get on with you applications.

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.