Kenyan fathers and mothers would now be required to take equal parental responsibility for children born out of wedlock, High Court has ruled. The court declared as unconstitutional section of the law which allowed absentee dads to either accept or decline to take responsibility for children they sired out of marriage.
While delivering the landmark ruling on Tuesday, March 12, Justice Jesse Njagi said the run away father, also infamously referred to as deadbeat dads, must be consulted in case of adoption or any other parental decisions touching on the child. “Parental responsibility is automatic and self-activating on parents upon the birth of a child and fathers cannot have discretion of either rejecting or accepting that responsibility. The automation of parental responsibility upon the birth of a child, and the responsibility is not left to the discretion of either the father or mother,” the judge ruled.
milk her father dry The judge ruled in cases where the mother and the father are still minors, then their parents, both from the girl and the boy’s side, should be involved in making of decisions about the child. Njagi clarified Article 53 of the Children Act accorded father and mother equal parental responsibility and that unemployment on the side of the father does not negate the said responsibility.
He declared unconstitutional, null and void, Section 2 (b) of the the Children Act which gave men room to decide whether to take responsibility for a child the sired outside wedlock or not. According to the invalidated Section 2 (b), a father who did not contribute to the upbringing of a child of accept paternity of the child could not be recognised as the child’s father under the law and therefore cannot inherit his property.
Interestingly, the same Section (b) recognised children born in wedlock as automatic heirs or heiress of the father’s property, and this, the judge argued, was discriminatory against those born outside marriage.
Njagi was ruling on a case that was filed by Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and a single mother of two who had sued man she claimed to be the father of her children and who declined to accept the children. The ruling appeared to be a slap on the face of former Attorney General Githu Muigai who held that the law that gave men freedom to either accept or reject children born out of wedlock was meant to protect men from extortion by women who are up to no good.