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Can the law force me to take care of my two exes' babies?

Dear Harold,

I have not been lucky with relationships. I have three children with different women that I do not live with. I have also been in relationships with some single mothers whom I lived with but parted ways after the relationships turn sour.

I have now been slapped with two legal letters from lawyers of my two exes claiming maintenance on grounds that I had acknowledged what they term parental responsibility.

What is this parental responsibility and how is it acquired? – I know that I am asking for many men out there.

Shem, Nairobi

Dear Shem

Legally, parental responsibility is the right, authority, power and duty to take care of and provide for a child. It can be acquired where the father and mother of a child were married to each other at the time of birth or when they marry after the child is born.

Men also acquire parental responsibility when they accept paternity of the child or stay with the baby for a total period of 12 months after birth. The law also presumes that providing basics to a child like buying clothes, food and catering for medication amounts to maintenance and consequently acceptance of parental responsibility.

A biological parent can also move to court to force a father or mother to accept parental responsibility of a baby. The court can order a spouse to remit monthly payments to support the child after establishing incomes of the parents.

If one biological parent has no source of income then the responsibility may wholly be on the one that has an income. The law insists on passing judgements in the best interests of the child.

And should the parent fail to remit the monthly payments, court orders may be sought to either attach the salary or sell assets towards raising money for maintenance.

Harry Ayodo is a practicing attorney of the High Court of Kenya and an employee of the Law Society of Kenya.

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