Page 84 - The Circle of Life

Fifthly, you may now call your new in law parent's mom and dad but that is

tradition and not law. Whatever works for you! Some are known to be called in
much less affectionate terms and yes, if your mother in law destroys your
marriage you can sue her theoretically under delict as with any other person

who does so. It seldom happens for obvious reasons.

Sixthly, you as parent become a legal guardian for the child born from your
marriage. Note this is not the same for prior marriage children but we speak

about that in the next paragraph below.

The rights of a stepdad or stepmother in marriage

I cannot tell you how many times my clients got into trouble because of this.

Many are older than me and in their second or third marriages. As is usual there
are almost always stepchildren involved and the question is what rights do the

step parent has?

The short answer is almost nothing but you also have no duties or obligations
either. The child is in effect nothing of you and I know it sounds cruel but that is

the way it is. You are not allowed to spank him or any other child including your
own in this country and many other jurisdictions. If you do you will be treated

like a criminal and your religious beliefs will not save you. The law always
overrides religious beliefs which are a good thing as long as it is decent and fair.

Where spanking of children is allowed you are not the parent and not allowed to

do so unless the parent gives you permission. That does not mean going
overboard and causing lasting injury. It is not allowed in this country by the way
but no problem in the rest of Africa.

Nor does it give you the right to strip search a child or anything which may be

seen as an unreasonable invasion of privacy or indecent behaviour. If you have
time I recommend you to read my briefing on drug abuse called The Drug Addict

Pattern which discusses this aspect in greater detail. You do have rights as a
parent to search the child's room and body if needs be for drugs or evidence of

drug use but understandably within the rules of decency as we discussed there.

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