Status of Children and Parentage

• Author: Fara Brown
• Profession: Attorney-at-law practising in Jamaica for over 30 years
• Pages: 313-347

8. Status of Children and

Parentage

1. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENTAGE THROUGH STATUTE

3. WHO IS A PARENT?

4. ESTABLISHING PARENTAGE: THE STATUS OF CHILDREN ACT 1976

5. THE CONCEPT OF PARENTAGE

6. PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE IN STATUS CLAIMS

7. THE WAY FORWARD

INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

‘So who is this?’ said the elderly aunt looking at the young

woman with a slight smile and an inquisitive gleam in her eye.

Her father and brother laughed nervously, but her sister stated

deantly ‘this is Daddy’s daughter, Sharon, she was in Toronto.’

The aunt’s eyebrows shot up, ‘But I don’t understand…’ she

cried, staring pointedly at the father, presumably for some kind

of explanation. The sister took her a little way off and a few

moments later she exclaimed ‘Oh, I see.’ Then she came and

took both the young woman’s hands, she stared into her eyes

‘Sharon, is it? Well welcome, I am your Aunt Mattie, we are

family, and this is where you come from.’

They were in southern St Elizabeth, high on a bluff inland

from the sea, outside an old well-kept wooden house – with

concrete addition (done by another aunt on her return from

America). The graves of the grandparents a little way off silently

witnessing what was taking place.

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314

This scenario is put forward as just one example of the sort of incident

which occurs in almost every family in Jamaica. People discover that

they are related to people who they might not previously have met,

or if they have met them they were previously ignorant of the fact

that they are related. After a period of discomfort (short or very

lengthy, depending on the circumstances and the type of family)

everyone muddles along. There is, however, another aspect to this

scenario which may not be readily apparent: If ‘Daddy’ migrates and

then wishes to have his children join him, close inspection of the

children’s birth certicates may reveal some discrepancies. Daddy’s

name may be absent from Sharon’s birth certicate or worse yet, the

name of her mother’s former husband may be inserted even though

‘everyone’ knew she was not his child. Furthermore, if ‘Daddy’ dies

and there is need to establish who his children are for purposes of

dividing his estate, once again it would appear that Sharon is not

his child. So begins the legal journey to unravel the documentary

suppositions and get to the truth. Such is the nature of paternity

matters as they arise within the Jamaican family.

Historical Overview

In Jamaica, women frequently become mothers before getting

married. The men who father the children of this early maternal

phase are sometimes unable (unemployed) or unwilling (married

to someone other than the mother) to take full responsibility for

those children. This can lead to reticence in terms of having one’s

name recorded on a child’s birth certicate as father.1 In any event,

given that registering the child may take place weeks after the birth,

this delay should give ample time for decisions to be made as to

the name and parentage of the child. In circumstances where the

1. This is to be contrasted with the account of the registrar general regarding the

rst Births and Deaths Registration Law, 1877 describing the ‘almost universal

practice’ for the father of the ‘illegitimate’ child to come forward to register his

offspring. See Jenny M. Jemmott, Ties that Bind: The Black Family in Post-

slavery Jamaica, 1834–1882 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2015),

186.

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315

woman is in a relationship with one man – whether married, living

together, or visiting – but becomes pregnant by another man, whilst

there may be no doubt as the child’s true parentage, it may not be

considered prudent for that to be acknowledged in public records.

In Jamaica when a woman dishonestly passes off her child as the

child of a particular man, she is said to give him a ‘jacket’. While

this phenomenon is documented as widespread, it is viewed as

the ultimate betrayal by most men. This, however, is a supercial

assessment of something that often involves the complicity of the

true father. It sometimes occurs with the knowledge and acceptance

of the ‘duped’ father because it would be embarrassing for him to

do otherwise. In this landscape, principles like the presumption of

paternity as encapsulated in section 6 of the Status of Children Act

have little relevance to the circumstances of most women and the

need to resolve these issues from a practical rather than a legal

standpoint may not arise until decades after these decisions were

taken.2 Whatever arrangements are made at or around the time

of birth may then need to be unravelled by way of a declaration

of paternity sometime in the future, whether for the purposes of

maintenance, migration, or inheritance. Usually, the nature of

the problem is that a child’s birth certicate does not have any

information as to the father, or the information which was recorded

is incorrect.

Until the Status of Children Act 1976, the only way to address

these problems outside of the limited powers of rectication under

the Registration of Births and Deaths Act was to bring some legal

recognition to the father was by way of afliation proceedings. This

only provided relief in terms of maintenance and a declaration that

one was the ‘putative father’ of a child meant little beyond the

boundaries of that act.

2. Interestingly, the Status of Children legislation in Barbados extends the

presumption to common law unions – Status of Children Reform Act.