How Hong Kong’s children of unwed parents miss out in a break-up
When unmarried couples with children break up, what are the parties’ rights in Hong Kong?
Is there discrimination against children born out of wedlock? In practice, the judiciary in Hong Kong makes every effort not to discriminate against such children. But on the face it, with the legislation as it presently stands – the answer is yes. The legislation which protects married couples and their children is significantly stronger than that which deals with children of unmarried parents.
As most people know, the rights of the parents are fewer if they are not married – there is limited financial relief for those people rather misleadingly referred to as “common-law wives” (or husbands these days). They are limited to a “carer’s allowance” for looking after the children but are entitled to no financial provision in their own right, and fathers have no custody rights unless they make a specific application to the court.
There are those who argue that it is right that the position of an unmarried couple should be different from those who have committed to marriage. That debate is a matter for Hong Kong society as a whole and beyond the scope of this article, but it has been generally agreed that such decisions by parents should not affect their children.
The fact that the children of cohabiting couples are treated differently is a problem which urgently needs attention as the prevalence of such families are on the increase in Hong Kong and around the world.
The Census and Statistics Department report on Marriage and Divorce Trends issued in January this year showed that there was an increasing trend towards marriage postponement or non-marriage in both genders between 1991 to 2011. The proportions of married men and women also dropped continuously over the same period, suggesting an increase in cohabiting families.
This mirrors a trend elsewhere: in the UK, numbers of cohabitees have increased by 12 per cent from 1996 to 2012 according to the Office of National Statistics. In the US a government census shows a marked increase in the number of cohabitees, with 7.8 million couples living together without walking down the aisle, compared to 2.9 million in 1996, and most of the increase was in the younger adult population.