• About
• Cases
• News
• Partners
• Awareness-Raising
• Contact

Using Mediation to Solve an Argument over Child Maintenance  

On 28th April 2016, a 29-year-old-woman came to the office to ask for help in getting child maintenance from the father of her one-year-old child. They had separated in February, soon after the birth of the child. Even though he had a job, the father had only made two small payments to support the child.

She had spoken to his family and they advised her to go to the court, but she doesn’t have his job details and she therefore came to the advice office for help. Paralegal Bazamile Magubane (right) phoned the respondent and invited him to the office for a mediation on the 3rd June. He agreed but later postponed to the 1st July.

On the date of mediation both parties came to the office. We started our mediation by giving the client a chance to tell her story. The respondent agreed that he made a mistake by not supporting his child and he explained that he had financial problems and he said he did inform the client of this.

The client asked the respondent to support the client with R 1000 a month but he said he cannot afford that and he suggested R 500 or R 600. The mother wanted R 600 and they agreed on that. The father suggested that they do a debit order so that the money goes straight to the mother’s account. The client accepted that, and on the following Monday they both went to the bank and set up the standing order.

The office followed up with the mother the following month and she said the father was paying as promised.