Duty Of Support For Children: The Role Of Parental Rights

Parental rights and responsibilities are listed in Section 18 of the Children’s Act. These include guardianship, contact, care and maintenance. Maintenance can be understood as the parent’s responsibility to provide for the needs of their children or payment towards the fulfilment of these needs. This responsibility is part of the parental duty of support towards children and this essay will focus on whether or not this duty falls on a child’s grandparents where a child is born out of wedlock and whether grandparents should in fact have this duty.
The common law duty of support is reciprocal and will only arise when there is a legal relationship between two people, the person who is responsible for providing the support has the means necessary to provide the support and the person claiming the support needs it. The duty of support regarding children has been included in Section
It should also be noted that this duty of support from grandparents will only arise if the parents of a child are unable to adequately provide for their child and the financial position of the grandparents will also be taken into consideration when considering this obligation. The Barnes case also held that where parents are unable to provide for their children, this duty will fall to both maternal and paternal grandparents. Article 10(3) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also places an obligation on states not to unfairly discriminate regarding matters of parentage when dealing with or assisting