Child born out of wedlock in Indonesia has some key issues in its proceedings. If you have a child born out of legitimate marriage, you should know these and make sure you don't get conflicted by our legal system. First, we have now amended Article 43 (1) of the Marriage Law stipulates that child born out of wedlock not only has civil relationship with its mother and her family, but the child also have civil relationship with the biological father, and his family as well. So, you have the whole nine yard, both the father and the mother’s side. This has nothing to do with the marriage between the mother and the alleged father. Let’s go through the rest of them.
The starting point to draw a fine line between the child and the father, is by having the father to acknowledge the child. According to the Article 280 of Civil Code, the acknowledgment is to create the civil law relationship with the child, and its father or mother. After the acknowledgement, you may draw anything between the two of them. You may establish a child support, parenting and visitation. The child is also entitled to use your family name. He/she might be able to claim as your heir in the inheritance matters. Sure you want to do it? If you’re positive, please contact me at Wijaya & Co, if you want to discuss any further. We have plentiful of portfolio and experience to assist you to navigate the legal system in Indonesia.
Furthermore, the amended Article 43 (1) imposed that a claim made in order to acknowledge the child and his father must be supported with a scientific evidence, like DNA test, as well as two witness that willing to take a stand at the court of law. The acknowledgment of an out of wedlock child must be approved by the court of law. The court verdict must shows the origin of the child, the acknowledgment made by the father, and the consent by the biological mother. This is an integrated proceedings. You can’t have one without the other. Cross examination is a very important session. You need to establish a case and it must be done with the evidence rule in the Civil Code. You need to make sure the evidence is comprehensive legal binding, and acceptable to the judge, and leads to the expected results.
The idea to come-up with the amended Article 43 (1) is to provide legal protection for the child born out of wedlock. The protection may be in the form of provision of complete identity. This is very important for essential matters such as school, travel documents, etc. It is the duty of the state to issue a document regarding the origin of the child with full names of the parents and printed on a birth certificate. Please contact me should you wish to discuss any further about this.
My name is Asep Wijaya. Thank you for reading my posts!
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Our thanks to Asep Wijaya, Managing Director of Wijaya & Co for sharing this information with us!