NST
18 November 2008

KUALA LUMPUR: The Bar Council wants Parliament to make changes to the law to compel non-Muslim fathers to maintain their children until they complete their tertiary education.

Its Family Law committee member Pushpa Ratnam said currently the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act compels fathers whose marriages were dissolved to maintain their children up to 18 years of age.

“We would like to see Parliament amend section 95 of the act and extend the period of maintenance to cover tertiary education,” she said.

Last week, the committee at its monthly meeting discussed several issues, including maintenance, that affected non-Muslim families. Section 93 of the Act stipulates that a father should maintain his child/children while section 95 limits the legal obligation to 18 years of age.

Pushpa said that usually mothers were given custody of children after their divorce.

“They end up struggling alone in maintaining their children who went for higher studies. This has to change.”

This contentious issue was publicly debated after a Federal Court ruled in April 2004 that non-Muslim parents were not legally bound to support the education of their children once they reach 18. The only exception are children with physical or mental disabilities.

On another matter, Pushpa clarified that lawyers practising family law did not mind government appointed marriage tribunals comprising bachelors to handle matrimonial disputes provided they were trained.

“The fact that a person is single is really not the issue as we have competent bachelors who have counselled couples who were on the verge of breaking up,” she said.

Last week, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar told the Dewan Rakyat that only a small number of non-Muslim marriages had been reconciled by the tribunals.

He said that only 368 cases out of 12,666 referred to marriage tribunals between 2004 and 2006 had been resolved.

Family lawyers had claimed that the low success rate were due to lack of training and tribunal members being inundated with a large number of cases.

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