Specialists in Civil Litigation, Family Law, Corporate and Commercial Law, Estate Planning & Insolvency.
We, as adults, have an enormous responsibility towards our children. We should do everything possible to ensure our children’s best interests are paramount. Although a parent also has rights, we should realise that children are entirely dependent on their parents for everything in their lives. The Children’s Act 38 of 2005 is a valuable Act to sharpen our awareness of Parental Rights and Responsibilities in South African law.
Child Care and Protection
As parents, we must always ensure that our children are in a caring and protected environment. They should always feel safe, and that means they should be in a safe home environment where they can develop without feeling threatened in any way. As custodians of our children, we must realise that caring for a child relates to putting a child’s daily needs first.
Child Contact
Parents should always be in contact with their children. Children need to know that their parents love them dearly. We cannot ignore or keep our children at a distance; they should be encouraged to come to their parents in any situation and share their experiences with them. When parents show their interest in their children, they will feel free to go to their parents in any case where they feel threatened. Parents do sometimes separate; close contact with their children is imperative to make them aware the parents are separated from each other but not from their children.
Child Guardianship
Parents must act as guardians to their children. A guardian makes critical legal decisions on behalf of the child to oversee their welfare and safety and attend to their financial needs. The guardian can make medical decisions, social settings, manage a property, and handle financial affairs such as banking, investments, payments of expenses, etc., of the child.
Financial Contributions to Child Maintenance
One of the most crucial responsibilities of a parent is to ensure that they make sufficient financial contributions to their children’s maintenance. A parent has a legal obligation to provide for the basic living expenses of a child. These expenses are food, clothing, shelter, health care and education. In cases where parents are separated and the child lives with the primary care parent, the other parent is obligated to make monthly or periodic payments to the custodial parent.
Whether biological parents are married or separated, parents share the same rights and responsibilities toward their children. Unmarried fathers are only responsible for their biological child’s maintenance and contact, while unmarried mothers have full parental rights and responsibilities. In cases where an unmarried father is in a serious relationship and living with the mother when the child was born, he can obtain parental rights if he then claims paternity and contributes to the child’s maintenance and upbringing. If the unmarried father desires more privileges and responsibilities, he can apply to the Children’s Court or the High Court to obtain guardianship.
A child’s best interests are paramount. A child is neglected when parents can no longer put a child’s interests first. Sometimes parents find it challenging to put their child’s best interests first for various reasons. There are, unfortunately, instances where parental rights and responsibilities are either terminated or suspended by the Court. The Court will decide to either limit, suspend or terminate a parent’s rights and obligations in these cases, either temporarily or permanently.
The Court will always firstly look at what would be in the child’s best interests. The other important factor will be the relationship between parent and child and the commitment of the parents towards their child. The Court will further decide whether any other factors need examination.
A person who is interested in the care and development of a child (like, for instance, a grandparent or relative, to name a few) and who are genuinely interested in a child’s well-being can apply to the Children’s Court or the High Court for consent to take part in the child’s responsibilities. As mentioned before, the Court will always first consider the child’s best interests and look at the relationship between the interested person and the child.
