Of everything said to keep a woman in a marriage, this is the one that works. Money can be earned and injuries heal. The prospect of walking out of your own house and never seeing your children again stops almost everybody, and men who use it know that.
It is worth separating two questions that get tangled together. What could actually happen, and what he is saying will happen. They are usually not the same, and the gap between them is where most of the fear lives.
What is usually said
The threats are remarkably consistent, which is itself informative.
That the children belong to his family. That you brought nothing and will leave with nothing. That no court gives children to a woman who abandoned her home. That he will take them to the village, or abroad, where you will not find them. That he will tell the court you are unstable, or immoral, or that you cannot feed them. That if you try, you will never see them again.
These are said with total confidence and are usually repeated by relatives, which is what makes them so persuasive. Confidence is not the same as accuracy, and most men saying these things have never spoken to a lawyer.
What the law actually says
Nigerian law does not hand children to fathers automatically, and it does not treat leaving a violent house as abandoning your children.
The governing principle in the courts is the welfare of the child. That is the test the Matrimonial Causes Act applies in matrimonial proceedings, and it is the principle the Child’s Rights Act sets out. It is not about who is the father, who paid what, or who left the house. It is about what arrangement is best for that particular child.
In practice courts weigh who has actually been caring for the child day to day, the child’s age, stability of schooling and home, the child’s own wishes as they get older, and whether either parent poses a risk. Very young children commonly remain with their mother. Violence in the home is relevant, both to custody and to whether contact should be supervised.
Two things complicate this and you should know them rather than be surprised by them. First, the Child's Rights Act has not been adopted identically everywhere, so exactly what applies depends on your state. Second, customary and Sharia courts approach these questions differently from the High Court, and in some customary systems the presumption runs towards the father’s family. Which court a case is heard in therefore matters a great deal, and it is one of the first things a lawyer will look at.
None of this means the outcome is guaranteed. It means the confident sentence “no court will give them to you” is not the law.
Why his position is usually weaker than he says
Because taking children is not the same as keeping them.
A man who removes children without an order has not settled anything. You can go to court, and the fact that he did it unilaterally does not help him. If he is the one who has never taken a child to school, never been to a clinic appointment and cannot name the class teacher, that becomes obvious quickly in a court and it is not a small point.
There is also a practical dimension nobody mentions. Children require daily work. A man threatening to take three children under ten is frequently relying on his mother or a sister to do all of it, and those relatives have not always agreed. Threats of this kind often collapse on contact with the arrangements.
The threat to remove them to the village or abroad
Take this one more seriously than the others, because it is the one that is hardest to undo.
If you think there is a real prospect of the children being taken out of reach, get legal advice quickly rather than waiting to see. Courts can make orders about where a child may be taken, and they can be asked urgently. Speed matters here in a way it does not elsewhere.
Practical steps in the meantime: know where the children’s passports are, and if you can safely secure them or their details, do. Keep photographs of each child that are current. Make sure the school has your written instruction about who may collect them, and that they have a way to reach you that he does not control. Schools do this routinely and it is not an unusual request.
What to do now
- Get advice before you act, if it is safe to wait. A lawyer who has done these cases can tell you what your actual position is, and it is usually better than you have been told. What legal help costs, and what is free covers how to find one.
- Do not leave the children behind to “sort it out later”. Once a pattern of care is established without you it becomes much harder to change, and this is the single most common regret we hear. If you cannot take them, get advice within days rather than months.
- Collect the documents. Birth certificates, immunisation cards, school records, results, medical records. Copies are better than nothing. Where to keep copies matters as much as having them.
- Build the record of who does the caring. School correspondence in your name, clinic cards, teachers who know you, the shopkeeper who sees you at the gate. This is the evidence courts find persuasive and almost nobody thinks to keep it.
- Write down the threats. Dates and words, kept somewhere he cannot reach. Threats to remove children are themselves relevant to a protection order.
- Tell the school. In writing, about who may and may not collect. Ask them to call you if anybody else arrives.
If he has already taken them
Get legal advice immediately, the same day if you can. Do not wait for him to calm down, and do not accept that the matter should be settled inside the family first. Write down when they were taken, from where, and by whom, and keep every message about it.
Do not attempt to retrieve them by force. It puts you in danger, it can put the children in danger, and it hands him something to use in court.
What to say to the children
Nothing about the court case, and nothing about what he has threatened. Children carry that badly and they are frequently asked about it afterwards by the other side of the family.
What helps is the small, boring reassurance: that they are not in trouble, that both of them being cared for is being sorted out by adults, and that they are allowed to love their father. What to say, by age is set out separately, and what one instruction to give them is the most useful thing on this site for a mother in a house where this is happening.
The thing to hold onto
The threat is used because it works, and it works because it is never tested. Almost every woman who has been told she will never see her children again has been told it by somebody who has not asked a lawyer.
Ask one. The answer is very often better than the threat, and knowing your actual position changes what you are able to decide. What custody actually involves goes through the process in more detail.
Questions people ask
Do children belong to the father under Nigerian law?
Not automatically. The governing test in the courts is the welfare of the child. Customary and Sharia courts approach it differently from the High Court, which is why which court hears the case matters and is worth asking a lawyer about early.
Will leaving the house count against me?
Leaving a violent home is not abandoning your children, and courts look at who has actually been caring for them. What does cause difficulty is leaving the children behind for a long period, because it establishes a pattern of care without you.
He says I cannot afford them, so he will get custody.
Income is one factor among many and it is not decisive. Courts look at care, stability, schooling and risk. Maintenance exists precisely so that a parent is not deprived of children for being poorer.
He has taken them to his mother. What do I do?
Get legal advice the same day if you can, write down when and from where they were taken, and keep every message. Do not try to take them back by force, because it endangers you and gives him something to use.
Should I tell the children what he said?
No. They carry it badly and are often questioned about it afterwards. Tell them they are not in trouble, that adults are sorting it out, and that they are allowed to love their father.
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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