Can a deportee be made to pay child support?

[evanovitch]

Can a deportee be made to pay child support?


Monday, March 08, 2010



Dear Mrs Macaulay,

<span style="font-style: italic">I am residing in the US as a naturalised citizen. At the moment, I am married to my husband pending the divorce decree. He has been living in Jamaica since being deported. My question is, how do I seek child support for my two children? He is not living in poverty but is known to conceal his true income.</span>

Thank you for your letter. You seem to be saying that you are in the process of divorce proceedings, because you said you are pending the divorce decree. But I'm not sure if you mean instead that you intend to file for it soon.

I understand that you and the two children of the marriage are living in the United States, you being a naturalised US citizen and that they will continue to reside there with you. Your husband on the other hand is now living in Jamaica, after he was deported from the USA. You wish to know how in these circumstances you can obtain child support for the children.

You seem to have information that he is living very well here. If this is the case, he can definitely afford to provide for his children. You say he is inclined to conceal his true income which is not an unusual act but is in fact par for the course.

How then can you obtain child support for your children? Well, you must contact an attorney-at-law here and retain her/him to prepare the application for you so that your husband will be ordered to provide for the maintenance of his children. You should be prepared to consider the matter of his having access to the children. This could be as a result of the judge requiring the inclusion of an order for access (following an amendment to the application), or because your husband applies for it. A court in dealing with issues relating to children will and must act in their best interest. As a result questions will be asked about his access to the children, and unless he does not want this or there are good and cogent reasons why they should not spend time here (like if the environment would be harmful to their welfare) with him, it will arise and be dealt with.

You must provide all the information about your children and what expenses you have to meet to provide for their necessary living expenses to your retained attorney here. In other words, itemise all their needs and put the exact or approximate cost or sum beside each item. You should not forget to include their entertainment as an item and include &quot;miscellaneous&quot; as one also to cover small and unexpected expenditures for the children. You must also tell the attorney everything you know about your husband's assets and income here and you must state what your income is as well.

Remember, you and your husband are obliged to provide for your children's maintenance, not in equal proportions, but apportioned according to each parent's financial situation. So, if he is financially better off than you are, his proportional contribution to the total of the children's maintenance needs would be greater than yours, or vice versa if you are in a better financial position than your husband.

I advise you to act on this as soon as possible. The orders sought can also direct him to pay the sums he is ordered to pay for the children into a bank account (which you will have to open here and which can convert and transfer it for you). If he fails to do so on any occasion - say for two or three months, you can proceed against him for his default, which would be a contempt of court. The court has made powers about how it can deal with him depending on the circumstances, but whatever it does to him when he is in arrears it will ensure that he pays the arrears due to you for the children's maintenance and enjoin him to meet his payment of the current months as well.

Good luck and take action as soon as possible.

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law and a women's and children's rights advocate. Send questions and comments via e-mail to [email protected]. We regret we cannot provide personal responses.

[evanovitch]

Grappling with broad-brush deportation?

Grappling with broad-brush deportation


Monday, March 08, 2010



WE are told in yesterday's Sunday Observer that more than 12,000 people were deported to Jamaica over the last four years. Many, many thousands more have been deported over the last two decades.

Talk never stops about deportations and the consequential difficulties for the Jamaican society. Invariably, Jamaicans focus on the perceived worsening of their country's crime problem as a result of hardcore criminal deportees from the United States, Britain and elsewhere entering the local underworld.

The articles in yesterday's edition remind us of another side of the story -- the plight of the deportees and their families.

<span style="font-weight: bold">The truth is that not all deportees are hardcore criminals.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">In a real sense, many are not criminals at all. As we understand it, since the passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in the United States, even unpaid fees for traffic offences can become grounds for deportation of non-US citizens, including green card holders.</span>

Anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle framed the situation clinically: &quot;Not everybody is just a criminal. A lot of people commit a little crime and if they were not migrants, no one would have thought of it as anything more than a misdemeanour.&quot;

In the case of a 40 year-old deportee, a husband and father who left Jamaica at age five/six, he, if he is to be believed, had reformed himself after early infractions and had become a law-abiding, regular family man. His family in the United States, including young children, are now not only economically deprived as a result of his deportation but are suffering serious psychological problems that could have long-term, negative effects.

Experts all agree that the sudden removal of a parent from a household can have devastating consequences for the children left behind. In the case of deported Jamaicans, most are males. Many are fathers.

The experts say, and experience in everyday life teaches, that the departure of the father from the household can become a trigger for boys especially, to become attracted to street culture, including gangs. Some become prone to violence and criminality in the absence of the father.

We would expect that the authorities in North America and Britain -- from whence the bulk of Jamaican deportees originate -- have long had to cope with such anti-social behaviour as a direct result of deportation-induced broken homes and families.

There is clearly a case to be made to overseas governments that, in their own self-interest, they need to be more selective rather than broad-brush in their approach to deportations.

To the extent that a more selective approach reduces the number of people deported, Jamaica will clearly benefit. That means there is every reason for the Jamaican Government to make the case as strongly as possible, if it's not already doing so.

We empathise completely with criminologist Professor Bernard Headley that &quot;If our government is big and bad enough to face down the powerful United States&quot; over the proposed extradition of Mr Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, then it &quot;ought to be bold enough to make meaningful representation&quot; on the deportation issue.