Mom wants no contact with deadbeat dad

Dear Mrs Macaulay,

When my son was born in 2022, I gave my son his father’s last name. His father was always financially dependent on me and became abusive six months after my son’s birth, when I would focus my personal finances on our child. Despite this, I stayed for over a year, hoping he would change. However, he began endangering my son’s safety during his aggression, which led me to involve the police and leave as advised.

Now, after a year of no contact, the father is requesting to see our son. I believe it’s in my son’s best interest to maintain no contact, and I would like to remove his father’s name from the birth certificate as well as change his last name to mine.

Could you please advise me on how I can proceed and if he can be relieved of his parental rights?

It is so very unfortunate that you chose to live in a relationship with a man who could not, or was so lazy and lacked self-respect, that he was happy to live with you meeting all the financial expenses for the home and for his own personal needs. What possessed you to live this way? And what did you expect in the circumstances would be his attitude and behaviour if and when you fell short of the monies you had been providing to him? He was nothing but your “kept man”. Did he do the housework for you at any time? Did he cook? Did he do the gardening or anything to assist you and lower your household burdens, as you were working in order to provide for you both and later for your child and still for him but not at the same level? If he did not do any of these things, he was clearly the lowest of the low and you were a fool to have accepted that way of life.

I am very relieved that you called the police on him. But you let this situation go on for a year of your son’s life, which is unimaginable.

The police should have advised you to go and apply under the Domestic Violence Act for protection and occupation orders to save you and your baby from moving out and resettling elsewhere. Anyway, you are no longer intimately involved with him.

You say that you wish to remove his name from your son’s birth certificate and change his surname to yours. You also wish to relieve him of his parental rights (and I suppose also his parental obligations to contribute to your son’s maintenance expenses). In other words, you do not want him to have any relationship at all with your son, or even see him.

Well, you would have to go to the Family Court in your parish and obtain assistance from the clerk to make the necessary applications there. You would have to give evidence of his aggression and abuse, both to you and your son, in every detail, in order to demonstrate that you feared for yours and your son’s safety then, and you still do from when he contacted you after a year of no contact and demanded to see his son. These applications would be under the Domestic Violence Act, for protection orders for you both. These would ensure that there is no contact with you and your son by any means whatsoever, including of course in person, whether in your home or elsewhere.

The judge will decide whether he is an actual threat and make the orders for a specific time. If he breaches such orders at any time, you must report it and he should be arrested. Always make sure that you have a certified copy of the order with you at all times, to show them at the time you report the breach.

Also, remember the provisions in the Child Care and Protection Act, which provides that a person (like your babyfather) commits an offence if the person is an adult who has custody, charge or care of a child, and willfully assaults, physically or mentally ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes the child, in any manner likely to cause the child unnecessary suffering or injury to health. If convicted in a parish court, he could be fined up to one million dollars or up to three years imprisonment, or both. It also, apart from the Maintenance Act, provides that a parent is legally liable to maintain their child and failing to do so, is guilty of “neglect of the child” and those penalties would apply to this man according to your letter as he has never provided anything for his child.

About the removal of his name from your son’s birth certificate, this is not possible unless you say and prove that your son is not in fact his child. You can however change his surname on his birth certificate by deed poll, which you can get a lawyer to draw up and register for you.

I hope I have answered your concerns and questions and this will assist you to decide and take some action to protect yourself and 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. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.