ADOPTION OF CHILDREN (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

10.28 a.m.

The Attorney-General (Mr E. P. Shanks): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The main value of the amendment proposed lies in clauses 2 and 3 the result of which will be that married couples will be enabled to adopt and give a proper status to an illegitimate child of one or the other. There are cases where the mother of an illegitimate child marries the natural father of that child and it is desirable that some proper means should be provided for the child to be adopted jointly by the husband and wife without the undesirable fiction at present resorted to whereby the mother has formally to give up her parental rights before an adoption order can be made.

Clause 3 of the Bill will allow for adoption in this very small class of case where the mother marries a man less than 21 years older than the child. Usually in such cases the man, married, is in fact the natural father. These two clauses will allow of these arrangements which I suggest are proper and desirable to be made.

The fourth clause of this Bill makes a minor alteration to section 9 of the Ordinance, which provides for rules to be made. At present there are rules providing for adoption orders to be made not in open court but in Chambers. Strictly, interlocutory applications should be dealt with in open Court. This has not been the practice in the past and it is desirable that provision should be made for the existing practice of dealing with interlocutory orders in Chambers to be regularised and put completely beyond doubt.

The final clause of the Bill adds a definition section which is now desirable so as to distinguish between fathers of legitimate children and the natural fathers of illegitimate children, and is consequential on the provision that will be made by clause 2.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill.- [Mr Shanks].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read the Third time and passed.