DAP laments delay in changing custody law

Party official and divorce lawyer A Sivanesan reminds the government of a promise it made two years ago

IPOH: DAP has called for speedy action on a government pledge to amend the custody law to give divorced parents equal rights in the upbringing of children.

A Sivanesan, a vice chairman in Perak DAP and a lawyer, recalled that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Aziz made the promise in June 2009.

However, he noted, the state Islamic affairs departments had yet to give their feedback after the Council of Rulers redirected to them the proposals for the amendment.

Sivanesan is the lawyer for S Krisnavani, who last Friday sought an interim order for custody, control and guardianship of her twin daughters.

She said her husband, K Magendra Rao, had converted to Islam and that she wanted to prevent him from converting the five-year-old twins, M Sivarubini and M Sivadarsni.

The Ipoh High Court has yet to set a date to hear the case.

Sivanesan, who has handled several similar cases, said Krisnavani was a victim of abuse of the Syariah law by divorced spouses who wanted to have custody of their children.

According to him, many such cases go unreported due to ignorance of the law or the non-Muslim parents’ reluctance to allow their marital problems to made public.

He said some husbands in broken marriages would convert to Islam to sidestep the civil law preference for maternal custody of children below the age of 11.

“The husband normally converts to Islam in secrecy and the wife only realises it when she comes to know that her children have been converted to Islam without her knowledge,” he said.

“The wife is caught in a legal dilemma because, being a non-Muslim, she cannot approach the Syariah court for legal redress. And when she goes to the civil court, she is told that a civil court has no jurisdiction over matters related to the Syariah court.”
He said the relevant laws needed to be amended to make it compulsory for both parents to give their consent in the conversion of children.

“The law shall be equal to everyone, according to Article 5 of the Federal Constitution, and there should be no superior law or inferior law,” he said.