Mexico City. The Mexican state wants to put more pressure on parents who do not contribute to the maintenance of their children with a national register for defaulting dependents. At the end of March, Congress passed a corresponding law called “Ley Sabina”.
It goes back to the initiative of an activist. Diana Vásquez Ruíz from the state of Oaxaca works to ensure that the father of her daughter Sabina pays her child support and has therefore founded the “National Front of Women against Child Support Debtors”.
With the law that has now been passed, which still has to be published in the official gazette and then implemented within just under a year, state and federal authorities as well as municipalities have the tools to restrict the civil rights of defaulting maintenance payers. Parents who do not pay maintenance for more than three months in a row are to be entered in the National Register by court or official decision. The register should be public and accessible to youth welfare offices and other authorities involved in children’s rights.
With many administrative procedures, but also with the purchase and sale of real estate, proof of non-entry in the register must be provided in the future. Defaulting payers should then no longer be able to apply for a driver’s license, passport or identity card, be nominated as judges or for elections and not be able to get married. In addition, there should be restrictions on the freedom of travel for these people if there is a risk that they will evade their maintenance obligations by fleeing abroad.
Vásquez Ruíz welcomed the passage of the law. “It’s not normal to let children down. It’s not normal for child support debtors to go unpunished and we don’t know who they are. It’s not normal for judges to cover for irresponsible parents,” she tweeted. She pointed out that several mothers have told her that their children’s fathers have now started paying child support.
In some points, however, she also expressed doubts about the law. So it is incomprehensible that the register is kept by the National System for the Integral Development of the Family (DIF). This institution is very small and it is questionable whether it can afford it.
So far there are 22 registers for defaulting dependents at state level. However, these would be managed by the authorities, which also keep the population register. The Ministry of the Interior manages the databases of the registry offices and could create a common database. The ministry has significantly more resources at the federal level than the DIF to set up and manage the register. The activist also called for the 90-day delay to be reduced to 30 days so that those affected no longer had to bear the family’s financial burden alone and no longer had to spend more money on lawyers and bureaucracy.
It is also possible that the law will go before the Supreme Court. Because the refusal of personal documents curtails the right to an identity, which has constitutional status in Mexico.
The poverty of single parents who raise their children without financial support from the other parent is a major problem in Mexico. According to figures from the statistical institute, in seven out of ten divorces one of the two parents does not meet their maintenance obligations, mostly men.
There are similar registers in other Latin American countries such as Colombia, Chile or Peru.