Agreement to blacklist child maintenance defaulters
With 70% of parents defaulting on child maintenance in the first two years of a court order, the Department of Justice and the Social Justice Foundation are going ahead with a plan to blacklist defaulters with credit bureaus.
A TimesLIVE report notes that the two entities and the Consumer Profile Bureau signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Friday to have defaulting parents blacklisted.
The move will take some time to come into full effect as the state needs to develop a system to facilitate it.
The department said the signing of the MOU marked the ‘commencement of a groundbreaking epoch where the department will develop a system to facilitate the forwarding of the details of people against whom child maintenance enforcement orders have been granted to a partner credit bureau – who will in turn make this information available to all other credit bureaus and credit providers’.
This would affect defaulters’ ability to get credit.
The move is aimed at implementing the provisions of the Maintenance Act.
The Social Justice Foundation’s Anneke Greyvenstein said with this partnership, ‘there will be a bridge between what is happening in our Family Court and what is happening in the credit industry, so we can start looking after our next generation’.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
