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Women face trial over false paternity claims
Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa chairs plenary on Wednesday. He urged government to guide the nation on the issue of DNA tests. Photo/DAVID LUBOWA
What you need to know:
Concerns that growing negative DNA tests would crack families have government to call for restraint and regulation.
A government agency and lawyers yesterday asked husbands to whom wives falsely assign children fathered by other men to sue both parties, if their actions can be proved as deceitful and malicious to shift care responsibility.
“It is torture,” Mr Paul Bananywa, a lawyer from Senteza and Co. Advocates said, adding, “You incur expense thinking the child is yours and you discover that the child is not yours. Let the money you spent be returned to you.”
Ms Patricia Atim, a family law expert and lecturer at Makerere University Law School, concurred, saying a husband with Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) test result proving he is not a child’s biological father has cause of legal action.
“You can bring a matter to the court that you want reimbursement for the expenses you incurred towards raising this child, or children, so that you close this chapter for mental anguish that you have been through and start a new life with your legitimate children, if you have,” she said.
The decision on whether to divorce such a wife, or not, is “another issue,” she said.
Ms Atim, however, emphasised that the intention of the law is to bring reconciliation between the couple and ensure the wellbeing of the affected child is guaranteed.
“But it is uncommon for the alleged father to accept the burden of taking care of the child after the negative DNA paternity test,” she said, proposing as a remedy that a child caught in such controversy lives with the mother with the biological father providing.
The comments in interviews with this newspaper follows rising demand for paternity tests over the past month after public disclosure by some of the wealthiest in Kampala that children they have brought up, numbering between one to as many as eight, turned out not to be theirs.
Concerns that growing negative DNA tests would crack families, the core unit of Uganda’s society, prompted clerics, Parliament and government to call for restraint, understanding and regulation of paternity tests.
The Ministry of Health on Wednesday held an emergency meeting with proprietors of laboratories offering paternity test services, and proposed that a mother, child and alleged father should be present for DNA testing.
Presently, suspicious fathers secretly take samples from themselves and doubt the child for testing, often catching mothers unawares.
Such practice, Information Minister Dr Chris Baryomunsi said, was disruptive and risked birthing social chaos to the detriment of family and the society.
Some women leaders including Gender minister Betty Amongi, have spoken out against paternity tests, arguing that sometimes it is husbands to blame because they are either unavailable for their wives or philandering.
In other instances, the minister argued, women are desperate and pressured by families of the husband to produce a boy child as heir-apparent, tempting them to try their luck elsewhere when children sired with a husband are all girls.
There have also been concerns, whose veracity varies on a case-by-case basis, that unscrupulous health workers swap babies at hospitals at birth or that DNA results might be wrong due to defective machines, incompetence or errors by specialists or inadvertent sample or results switches.
These concerns notwithstanding, the Equal Opportunities Commission, a government agency that fights discrimination and inequalities, said aggrieved husbands have a right to sue wives who conceive for other men for infidelity and contracting care for a child by concealment and fraud.
He asked women in Uganda to always be sincere by reporting pregnancies outside wedlock to their husbands before giving birth or shortly thereafter, to avoid torturing men and affecting the wellbeing of their children.
“Men have a right to sue their wives in case the DNA test results prove that the children in the home do not belong to the men,” said Mr Yusuf Muziransa, the Commission spokesman.
He called for maturity and sincerity on the part of married women who elope with other men to make prompt disclosure to their husbands, like many men do, without waiting to be found out through a paternity test.
Men also blamed
Mr Richard Omongole, a lawyer from Omongole and Co. Advocates said men behind such extra-marital pregnancies should also be sued.
“There are men who are moving around and impregnating people’s wives and they allow the unsuspecting husbands to take care of those children,” he said.
He added: “Everybody should be responsible for what they bring into this world. You don’t father a child and expect someone else to take care of them. The man who was hiding from responsibility should also be sued if they both knew.”
