Babymother says I’m not the father
DEAR MRS MACAULAY, My babymother registered our son in basic school under her name, and I only found out when I went to collect his report recently. When I asked her what happened, she said the child wasn’t mine, and she plans to make changes on his birth certificate soon. After his birth four years ago, I signed all the documents that I was told to sign, and I have been doing everything as his father. Can she do this? I am devastated, as this is my first child.
What is wrong with this mother that she could act in such an atrocious, unfeeling, disrespectful and untrustworthy manner after clearly misleading you for over four years? She must have known that you were not the father from the beginning, and she clearly is very adept at manipulating a lie because you believed her!
Well, she cannot just go to the Registrar of Births and Deaths and change what she herself declared to the Registrar when she named you as the father. This was a Declaration on Oath, and it is an offence to knowingly make a false declaration, and she can be charged and tried for her offence. In addition, when you signed the documents, there was a declaration also, which you signed based on your belief that you were the father.
This child, in the four years of his life, has known you as his father, and a father and son relationship has developed between you both and so she has also wronged her son and will cause him confusion and trauma.
She would have to go and make an application in the Family Court of your parish, and convince the court that she is now speaking the truth and confess to her earlier lie. The court would require strict proof about which of her assertions of the paternity of her son is in fact the truth, and then that it would be in the best interests of her son that his birth records should be changed.
She would also have to serve the other man who she is claiming is her son’s father, and acceptably and satisfactorily explain why she had lied to you. The judge may or may not accept her evidence, and the other man would have to give evidence of their sexual encounters and the dates and times and whether he had known of the child’s birth at the time, and if not, when he knew of it and how.
Your evidence would also have to be taken and after all that, the judge would decide whether or not to grant her application. If it is granted, the question of all that you have spent throughout the years would have to be dealt with and generally, the court would order that she, the deceitful mother, must repay the total to you pursuant to the Children’s (Guardianship and Custody) Act. The judge would decide whether to try issue of her offence there and then or postpone that to be dealt with on another date.
My advice to you is that you should go to the Family Court and see the clerk who is responsible for assisting applicants. You should have the clerk help you to apply for a declaration of paternity — this will mean that a DNA test will have to be done, and if you know who she is now saying the father is, this may be sufficient for a judge to order a DNA test for him also. Any changes of your son’s birth certificate, if being done legally, can only be done by a court order, so either she, the ‘other man’, or you, must apply to the court for a declaration of paternity. I feel very strongly that such an application should be made by you.
So please either go to the Family Court for your parish and have your application done, or obtain the services of an attorney-at-law to act for you and have it done as quickly as possible. Neither your son nor you ought to be left in this situation any longer.
Your application must also include the issue of the custody and care and control of your son, to be joint if you are his biological father, and if not, for the refund of all that the mother’s lie caused you to pay out for the child’s expenses. Then the issue of her false declaration on her report of the child’s birth would have to be dealt with by the court.
Please act now for your son’s sake, and I wish you and him all the very best.
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. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide private, personal responses.
