Fear of losing the children keeps more women in violent marriages than almost anything else. In most cases that fear is based on something a husband has said rather than on anything a court would decide.
He is not usually lying deliberately. He often believes it, because it is what he was told, and because custom and law are widely assumed to be the same thing. They are not.
What the court actually considers
The welfare of the child is the first and paramount consideration. That phrase is not decoration. It is the test, and everything else is evidence going to it.
Courts look at who has cared for the child day to day, the age and needs of the child, stability including schooling, the wishes of an older child, and the conduct of each parent where it affects the child.
Violence towards a mother is relevant. A child who witnesses violence is affected by it, and that argument should be put properly with evidence rather than mentioned in passing. Medical records, police extracts and school records all carry weight precisely because they were made by people with no stake in the outcome.
Take them with you
If they are with you and it is safe, take them.
Leaving children behind, even briefly and with excellent reasons, creates two problems that are much harder to solve than they look. It allows an argument that the children are settled where they are and should not be moved again. And it is far harder to reverse quickly than most people expect, because the court is being asked to change something rather than to preserve it.
If you could not take them, get legal advice the same day rather than waiting until you are settled. Speed matters here more than in any other part of this subject.
Do not remove them from the country
Taking a child abroad without the other parent’s consent or a court order can be treated as abduction, even by a parent with entirely good reasons.
It can result in an order to return the child, it can damage your position permanently, and it can expose you to criminal consequences. If you are outside Nigeria and thinking of coming home with the children, take advice in the country you are in first. This is the single most important sentence on this page.
Contact
Courts generally start from the position that a child benefits from a relationship with both parents, and then look at safety. That starting point is difficult to accept when the man in question has hurt you, and it is the reality to plan around rather than argue with.
Where there has been violence, contact can be supervised, can take place at a contact centre, and can involve handovers at a neutral place so that you and he never meet.
Handovers are the point at which women are most often assaulted after separation. Never agree to a private handover at your home or his. Use a public place, a third person or a supervised service, and put the arrangement in the order rather than in a message. An arrangement agreed by text under pressure is not an arrangement.
Maintenance
Maintenance for children is not conditional on who left or why, and it is not payment for contact.
A father who is refused contact still owes maintenance. A father who pays maintenance is not thereby entitled to contact on his own terms. The two are separate obligations and conflating them is one of the commonest ways women are pressured into unsafe arrangements.
What strengthens your position
- A dated record of incidents, including any the children saw or heard.
- Medical and police records.
- School records showing who attends meetings, who collects the child, and who the school contacts.
- Evidence of day to day caring, such as clinic cards and immunisation records.
- A stable arrangement for where the child will live and go to school.
- Any protection order, which demonstrates that a court has already accepted there is a risk.
That last point is worth acting on early. An order obtained before a custody dispute begins is far more useful than one obtained during it.
If he threatens to take them
Threats about custody are one of the commonest control tactics and are very often empty. They should nonetheless be answered with a document rather than a hope.
- Write down the threat with the date and the exact words.
- Tell the school in writing who may and may not collect the child.
- Get advice about an order quickly.
- Keep the children’s documents with you, because a passport in his possession is a practical problem as well as a legal one.
What the children need from you meanwhile
Stability and honesty at a level they can carry. Not the details of the case, which belong to adults. What to say at different ages, and how to answer the question about whether they will see their father, is set out separately.
Questions people ask
He says the children belong to his family. Is that true?
Custom is not the test a court applies. The welfare of the child is, and courts have made orders in favour of mothers in exactly these circumstances.
I left without my children. Have I lost them?
No, and act quickly. Get legal advice the same week. Delay causes the difficulty, not the fact of having left.
Can I stop him seeing them?
Only a court can decide that. What is realistically available is supervised contact and neutral handovers, which is worth asking for explicitly.
Do I still get maintenance if I refuse contact?
Maintenance and contact are separate obligations. One is not payment for the other.
Can I take the children abroad?
Not without consent or a court order. Doing so can be treated as abduction even where your reasons are good.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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