South Africa takes unprecedented steps to enforce child maintenance payments through credit bureau blacklisting. New agreement between the Department of Justice and Consumer Profile Bureau marks turning point in child support enforcement. Picture: File photo.
If you father a child, you are legally bound to support that child financially, and if you default on your maintenance obligations you are liable to be blacklisted by credit bureaus, restricting your access to credit. This is on top of facing criminal charges, if the mother of the child lays such charges against you, which she is entitled to do, as well as any civil claims for maintenance arrears.
Last week, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, in collaboration with the Social Justice Foundation, concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Consumer Profile Bureau to blacklist parents who default on their child maintenance payments.
The laws enabling such measures were promulgated in 2018, in the Maintenance Amendment Act, which amended certain sections of the Maintenance Act to give the government added powers to regulate and penalise maintenance defaulters. This included empowering maintenance court officials to supply the details of a defaulting parent to credit bureaus and credit providers.
According to a report in a recent newsletter by law firm STBB, the conclusion of the MoU is aimed at “executing the progressive objectives of the Act, namely to enable and enforce maintenance payments”. In practice this means that your maintenance obligations will now reflect on your credit profile and form part of your affordability assessment when you apply for credit, such as when you finance a car or apply for a clothing store card.
“The full implementation of the system, however, will take some time, as the government must first develop a database to facilitate the collection and dissemination of information,” STBB says.
In a government press release published last Friday, Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Thembi Simelane was quoted as saying the days of those who have been shirking their responsibilities and not paying maintenance are numbered.
“We are indeed coming for them,” Simelane said at the signing ceremony of the MoU on the Maintenance Online Listing of Defaulters held in Johannesburg on November 1. She said the MoU heralded a new era in the quest to ensure that maintenance defaulters “have no place to hide”:
She said the Constitution was clear in promoting the best interests of the child. “The Constitution protects and provides ... that ‘a child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child.’’
The Maintenance Act creates an obligation on both parents to support their children proportionately in accordance with their financial means. “However, and notwithstanding this provision, many parents still fail to support their children and this failure negatively impacts on the children’s rights to maintenance, which includes the provision of food, accommodation, education, health and clothes,” the Minister said.
She said anyone failing to make a particular payment, in accordance with a maintenance order, is guilty of a criminal offence and liable, on conviction, to a fine or to imprisonment.
“Parents are fully entitled to lay a criminal charge against a person who is obliged to pay maintenance in terms of a court order if he or she fails to stick to the terms of the order. Although this step will likely result in a person’s arrest, it will not necessarily result in receiving payment,” Simelane said.
She said that, judging by the long queues at the maintenance service centres, it was clear that there were problems in the enforcement of maintenance payments. “Often, people liable to pay maintenance either refuse or simply neglect to fulfil their obligation,” she said.
“South Africa’s commitment to child welfare is embedded in our laws, and our obligations, as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, stand as a testament to this. We are duty-bound to take every measure necessary to ensure that the maintenance of children is not only an ideal but a reality,” Simelane said.
The Minister explained that the Maintenance Online Listing Project will create a structured, transparent framework whereby maintenance obligations are tracked, enforced and integrated within our financial systems.
“The strength of this project lies in the powerful partnership between the public and private sectors. The Department of Justice, the Social Justice Foundation and the Consumer Profile Bureau have come together to drive this initiative forward. Each partner brings a unique strength, ensuring that this initiative reaches every corner of our nation and stands as a model of efficiency and accountability,” Simelane said.
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