XN000022-1996-12-04 — Page 13

Maintenance of illegitimate children

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The third area of family law reform relates to illegitimate children. Under the Affiliation Proceedings Ordinance the mother of an illegitimate child may apply to the court for an order against the putative father for the maintenance of the child. The Guardinaship of Minors Ordinance allows either of the parents of a minor child or the Director of Social Welfare to apply for custody of the child, irrespective of whether the parents are married to one another. At present under that Ordinance the court may grant a maintenance order against a parent, but only in favour of the person (whether parent or not) who has been granted custody of the child.

The Bill, by clause 79, proposes to amend the Guardianship of Minors Ordinance so as to enable the mother of an illegitimate child who has legal custody of that child (even though no custody order has been made under the Ordinance) to obtain a maintenance order in respect of the child. Since the proposed amendment makes the Affiliation Proceedings Ordinance redundant it is proposed to repeal it.

Obsolete matrimonial remedies

The fourth area of family law reform relates to certain obsolete remedies. Clauses 83 to 86 of the Bill are intended to bring about minor reforms in the law of matrimonial proceedings by abolishing the now virtually obsolete decree of jactitation of marriage. This is a court order to restrain a person from wrongfully claiming to be another person's spouse. Clause 87 removes a redundant reference in subsidiary legislation to the remedy of restoration of conjugal rights which was abolished in 1972.

Keeping registers of births, deaths and marriages in non-legible form

As I mentioned earlier, the Bill proposes to modernise the law governing the keeping of records of births, deaths and marriages. The methods employed to maintain official registers of those events in Hong Kong need to be updated in the light of modern technological developments. Clauses 48 to 78 of the Bill contain a series of proposals for amending the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance and the Marriage Ordinance for the purpose of legalising the storage of marriage records by microfilming and the storage of births and deaths records in both microfilm and computerised forms.

Miscellaneous Minor Amendments

I now turn to some of the other miscellaneous amendments in the Bill.