Voon Shiak Ni
KUCHING: Divorced fathers have to pay child support until their children finish tertiary education or vocational training following the latest amendment to Section 95 of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 2017.
National Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) vice women chief Voon Shiak Ni, in pointing this out, said she could not be more thankful that the amendment had just been gazetted.
“As a practising lawyer for divorce and family matters for many years, I have indeed taken note of the challenges faced by divorced couples whereby the children’s interests and welfare are compromised when maintenance issues stay unresolved or unfulfilled.
“In all divorce proceedings, the children’s welfare is of paramount importance, and will come first in deciding on the terms and conditions in a divorce matter,” she said in a statement received here yesterday.
Voon said divorced wives and single mothers faced the continuous default by their ex-husbands to pay for their children’s upkeep after divorce.
She added matters get more complicated when the divorced adults remarry.
“It is also a common dispute as to when child support by husbands should end.”
She noted that many divorced husbands chose to end the maintenance of their children when their children reached 18 or 21 years old.
She said lawyers dealing with divorce cases usually advised that support be provided until children finish their tertiary education or have started working, whichever comes first.
“Making sure that the children’s interests are taken care of is my priority in handling family matters.
“I would say it is a tedious task which requires a lot of patience to ensure that some kind of order can be put in place to minimise any negative impacts, especially on the children.”
With the amendment, she said it should provide a stricter guideline for fathers to provide for their children after a divorce.
She added that such amendment should serve as a legal protection for children of divorced parents.
“The country’s divorce rate is quite high and the 2012 statistics shows that a divorce is filed every 10 minutes in Malaysia.
“Hence, the need to afford adequate provisions to protect the needs and livelihood of children of divorced parents,” she said.