Custody
Author | Fara Brown |
Profession | Attorney-at-law practising in Jamaica for over 30 years |
Pages | 256-312 |
7. Custody
1. INTRODUCTION
2. CUSTODY LEGISLATION IN JAMAICA
3. DEFINITIONS
•The Welfare Principle
•Custody
•Access
4. PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE FOR CUSTODY APPLICATIONS
5. GUARDIANSHIP
•Introduction
•Summary and Overview
•Statutory Provisions
•Practice and Procedure for Guardianship
6. ADOPTION
•Introduction
•The Act
•The Legal Effect of Adoption
7. THE WAY FORWARD
INTRODUCTION
Upon the death of Desmond, his wife Mary found herself in
poverty, with more children than she could properly take care
of. The solution was that two of the children were ‘adopted
out’ into what turned out to be two different families. The
boy found himself in a family that had some money and spoilt
him. He was indulged and petted, with little emphasis placed
on the importance of getting a sound education. At an early
age, he joined a small band of musicians who played at local
dances. His youth was spent in jollication and libation. The
girl, on the other hand, was fortunate enough to nd herself in
Custody
257
a reasonably ‘well-to-do’ family that nurtured her intelligence
with proper schooling and ensured that she took all the public
examinations to further her ability. She did spend an occasional
weekend with her birth mother and the remaining siblings, but
she still slightly resented that her mother had given her away,
and her siblings were openly jealous and excluded her. At the
appropriate time, she was ‘boarded out’ 1 in Kingston in order
to attend a prestigious high school. After leaving school, she
went to a teachers college so as to be able to enter the main
profession open to women at that time.
Unfortunately, in many situations as the one described, there were
different and more serious results. Many a teenage pregnancy has
had its origin in inadequate family supervision due to the absence
of a parent, and many instances of juvenile delinquency can be
attributed to distant or non-existent parenting. At the same time,
many children have found themselves to be the beneciary of well-
meaning caregivers, some related, who have taken them in, brought
them up, and launched them into a successful life.
In Jamaica, as in most Caribbean countries with a population
which is predominantly of African descent, the issue of child care is
a battleground between the received norms of the former colonial
masters enshrined in the law and the social and cultural values of
child-rearing, originating from Africa.2
The importance of family as an extended, rather than a nuclear
concept, is the foundation of the Jamaican approach to raising
children.3 When the issue of child care is compounded by that
constant feature of island living – migration4 – a potent mix of
1. Persons would (and still do) provide lodgings for children from the country who
were/are attending school in certain main towns.
2. For some reason, it would appear that the child custody norms of the other
population strands have not played a signicant role in shaping the law in
Jamaica.
3. Caribbean Families-Extended Families, http://family.jrank.org/pages/204/
Caribbean-Families-Extended-Family.html.
4. This took the form of ‘intra-Caribbean’, hemispheric, and later intercontinental
migration; see Verene Shepherd, ‘On the Move: Caribbean Women and
Emigration,’ in Women in Caribbean History: The British-colonised Territories
(Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1999).
Family Law in Jamaica
258
motivation, ambition, and largely good intentions5 is constrained by
inexible legal denitions and categories that most people do not
identify with at all.
What may appear to be a fairly casual approach to ‘who goin’
look after di chile’ [Who is going to look after the child?] masks
what is basically an assumption that one’s family is available as a
child care resource when the vicissitudes of life impede direct
parental involvement.6 Interestingly, migration, whether from
country to town, or from one island to another, or from Jamaica
to America, Canada, or the UK – is an enduring occurrence, but
not the only factor that inuences child care practices. In Jamaica,
as with anywhere else, parents may get sick, die, or go to jail, but
there are also some situations and features which prevail in the
Commonwealth Caribbean that are less typical.7 Women who
perform domestic work on a ‘live-in’ basis are forced to leave their
own children in the care of others while they keep house and look
after their employer’s children. In such circumstances, the prolonged
absences of the biological parent cause children to look upon their
day-to-day caregiver as parent, rather than the person who comes
periodically bearing apologetic gifts.8 In situations where the parent
is in another country the children wait patiently for the parent to send
for them, and even when this dream materializes, it often becomes
difcult for the parent and child to resume their respective roles in
relation to each other because they simply do not know each other.
In the circumstances described, the concepts of custody,
guardianship, and adoption are terms that bend and ex to suit
the circumstances. Adoptions in Jamaica are often informal and do
5. ‘Better wages, educational opportunities, and for self-improvement’.
6. Leaving children with grandparents remains an enduring feature of Jamaican
family life.
7. Teenage pregnancy, see Pauline A. Russell-Brown, Beverly Norville and Cheryl
Grifths, ‘Child Shifting, a Survival Strategy for Teenage Mothers,’ in Caribbean
Families: Diversity Among Ethnic Groups, eds. Jaipaul L. Roopnarine and Janet
Brown, 223–242 (Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation,1997).
8. This is seen up to the present in the phenomenon of ‘barrel children’. See notes
under ‘Children and the State’ chapter.
To continue reading
Request your trial