You, your child and the law

You have three responsibilities towards your child — she must be maintained, protected and educated. Maintaining a child means paying for her upkeep. This includes providing clothes, food and a home until she’s at least 16 (the legal age of maturity).

Both parents share this responsibility. When she attains six years, you have to make sure she ‘receives education’ by sending her to school and making her go regularly until she’s 16.

Protecting your child means you must look after her properly until she’s 18 (longer if she’s physically or mentally unable to look after herself).

PROTECT HER

This means you must take her to a doctor when she’s ill, give her food and take her to school. You must also supervise your child when necessary and not let her get into dangerous situations.

There are also a number of other laws affecting children (mainly those under 16) that are designed to protect them from sexual abuse and ‘moral’ danger.

Failure to meet any of these three responsibilities has consequences. Your child may be taken away from you to live with foster parents or in a children’s home.

You could be prosecuted, particularly in the case of cruelty or neglect. Finally, you may have to compensate your child (which means paying money) if you’ve caused her an injury.

Your parental rights far outnumber your responsibilities, and most of them last until your child is 18.

DISCIPLINE

You can punish your child, but you must be ‘fair and reasonable.’ What’s reasonable will vary from child to child depending on age, sex, build, strength and understanding. But you must never injure your child .

Excessive punishment can lead to criminal charges or the child will be taken off your care. When your child’s at school, your right to punish her is transferred to her teacher.

CARE AND CONTROL

This is something known as possession or custody. You can decide ‘the place and manner in which your child’s time is spent.’ This includes choosing where and with whom she lives with, what she eats, what she wears and so forth. The older your child is, the harder it will be, to control her movements. In fact, the law expects you to allow your developing child some freedom to decide such things as what to wear.

MEDICAL TREATMENT

Until she’s 16, you have the right to decide what medical and dental treatment she has. This covers routine visits to the doctor and dentist and such things as vaccination, checkups and all operations. Your consent won’t be needed if your child is hurt in an accident and requires emergency treatment. The doctors may also go ahead without your consent if you refuse (unreasonably) to give consent to essential treatment or you want treatment that the court considers harmful to your child. This will happen even if your child is not yet 16 but mature enough to understand what’s going on and, therefore, capable of giving her own consent.

ACCESS

This is sometimes called ‘visitation rights.’ If you’re not living with your child — say you’re divorced  — then you will probably have the right to visit her. Only in exceptional cases (if your visits are considered harmful, for instance) will the court take this right away.