In family law, the presumption of paternity is one of the strongest in Florida. Japan is about to change its 19th-century law about the paternity. The change in the law of paternity for children born after divorce will help Japanese children facing difficulties getting healthcare and education.
Spirited Away
Under a Japanese 1898 Civil Code that’s still in force, a child born to a woman within 300 days of divorce is considered to be that of her former husband, even if she has remarried.
Many women opt not to register their children rather than comply with the regulation, especially in cases of domestic abuse. The country’s practice of registering its citizens under household units has hampered attempts by campaigners to gain the right for married couples to retain separate names, as well as to introduce same-sex marriage.
Japan consistently lags other developed countries in terms of gender equality. It was ranked 116th out of 146 countries in the annual Global Gender Gap Report released by the World Economic Forum in July.
Japan is also one of 32 countries that maintain discriminatory restrictions on remarriage for women after divorce, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
According to a lawyer who succeeded in getting the remarriage ban for women shortened to 100 days from six months in a 2015 Supreme Court ruling, the amendment also indicates a belated shift toward prioritizing the rights of children.
Japan’s Cabinet approved draft legislation Friday to scrap a rule that has prevented the new husband of a woman who has remarried from assuming paternity over a child born within some 10 months of the woman’s divorce from her previous partner.
Florida Paternity Presumption
I have written about Florida family law matters, including paternity changes, before. In Florida, the law presumes that the husband of the biological mother of a child is the child’s legal father. This presumption is one of the strongest rebuttable presumptions known to law, and is based on the child’s interest in legitimacy and the public policy of protecting the welfare of the child.
Because of the strength of this presumption in Florida, many courts have held that a person claiming to be a “putative” father does not have the right to seek to establish paternity of a child who was born into an intact marriage if the married woman and her husband object.
In some courts, the presumption of legitimacy of a child is so strong, it may never be rebutted. The Florida Supreme Court, however, has reaffirmed that the presumption of legitimacy afforded to a child born within an intact marriage is exactly that: a presumption. And the presumption of legitimacy may be rebutted in certain, rare circumstances.
Big in Japan
The change in the law of Japan is aimed at addressing a problem in which some children of divorced women have been left off family registers to avoid former husbands being recognized as fathers. This has resulted in difficulties in children accessing health, education, and other services.
Under what would be the first change to the century-old Civil Code provisions regarding paternity and marriage, a rule banning women from remarrying within 100 days of a divorce, long considered discriminatory, is also set to be scrapped.
A Justice Ministry survey found about 70 percent of 793 individuals not included in family registers as of August this year had mothers who did not submit birth notifications because of the current legal paternity rule.
Many women, in addition to those who have fled from domestic violence, have opted not to submit notifications of the birth of their child with their current partners in order to avoid having their former husbands recognized as the legal father.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also gave the nod to giving mothers and children the right to file for court arbitration with regard to paternity disputes. At present, former husbands can deny paternity over children born within 300 days of a divorce.
The period for filing for arbitration will be set at within three years of knowledge about a birth. Under the current arbitration system, which has been limited to former husbands seeking to deny paternity, the period was set at one year.
The revisions also include deleting the parental right to punish children, while clearly stating that physical punishment and verbal and physical actions that harm a child’s healthy development are not permissible.
Registration and paternity rules are particularly important in Japan, where birth out of wedlock is rare and widely frowned-upon. About 2% of children are born to unmarried parents, while the average across OECD countries is 41%.
The Japan Times article is here.
