THE happy news is that it will be easier from next year for women to seek and enforce maintenance orders against ex-husbands for regular support payments to them and their children.
The sad news is that the tougher measures Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister Vivian Balakrishnan announced are needed at all. What happened to the once widely accepted notion that it is a man's responsibility to take care of his children and their mother, even after his marriage has ended?
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days, before the 1961 Women's Charter came into being, when a man could have more than one wife, but at least then he met his obligation of providing for his 'extended' family.
The question is related to another: Why are more and more marriages ending in divorce?
The short answer: Societal change, which can be seen as both cause and consequence of stresses on the family. Not only has there been a devaluation of the sanctity of marriage, but also a loss of such traditional values as responsible fatherhood. As Dr Balakrishnan pointed out, 6 per cent of couples who married in 2004 divorced by the fifth year, up from the 3.2 per cent among those who wed in 1987.
The two trends have merged and the distressing result is often financially stretched divorcees and children barely able to have even basic necessities.
In tandem with divorce, defaulting fathers - yes, almost all culprits are men - have become an increasingly big problem. More than a fifth of 4,515 maintenance orders issued in 2005 were breached within three years.
Nearly half of these were ignored more than once. It is not a flattering picture. The wide- ranging measures are timely, if not overdue. Aimed at both ends of the enforcement process, they make it easier for complainants to get help from the courts and they seem a sufficient deterrent against intending or repeat defaulters.
Access to information, including from the Central Provident Fund Board or by court order, will expose ex-spouses' attempts at hiding assets and income sources. A bank guarantee might be ordered.
The possibility of having credit standing damaged or subsequent marriage prospects compromised because of non-payment will likely be persuasive. As embarrassing, employers can expect to receive more court orders to garnish wages.
The measures will go a long way to alleviating the plight of women and children, but to be completely and sustainably successful, they need to be felt at another level. They must have an impact on society in reversing the deterioration of values that led to the problem in the first place.
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
http://www.divaasia.com/article/8042
