Doctors go to war over love child

Two doctors, one a top specialist based in Johannesburg and the other who now lives in Malaysia, are embroiled in an elaborate custody battle over a two-year-old boy one of them gave birth to.

The doctors, who cannot be named to protect the minor child’s identity, have launched several court applications against each other since September last year. The child’s paternity is now also being questioned as he is registered under his mother’s husband’s surname.

The mother, who was married at the time of a brief affair with a doctor in 2017, has accused him of using the Covid-19 travel restrictions to take her child away from her and “judicial kidnapping”, while he claims that his rights as a father have been violated.

According to court papers, the woman discovered she was pregnant in September 2017 and advised the doctor of the pregnancy and that he was possibly the father.

“She thereafter relocated to Singapore with her nuclear family. He was at all times aware of the relocation. On May 4 2018, the child was born in Singapore. The parties thereafter and until August 24 had an effective co-parenting relationship that included the mother affording him extensive contact rights to the child, including allowing him to collect the child for visits to SA for a few weeks at a time to enable him to spend time and develop a relationship with his extended family,” the court papers state.

In January last year, the mother, who had moved to Malaysia, informed the father that she would be travelling to SA for a family wedding. The father requested permission to collect the child earlier from Malaysia to travel to SA, where he would later join his mother at the wedding.

The child was expected to return to Malaysia on March 14. The mother claims the father asked for an extension of the visit, while he claims that he kept the child for a longer period at her request.

On March 18 Malaysia went into a lockdown, while SA went into a hard lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic a few days later. This resulted in the child being “stuck” in SA. According to the court papers, the mother continually made inquiries to the authorities about his return to her primary care.

The court papers said that on August 24 the father told the child’s mother “that he had impregnated his partner and that she had given birth to his child three weeks previously. This was the first time that the mother had received any information of the fact that he was in a permanent relationship or that he had another child.”

A day later, the mother informed the father in Johannesburg that she would lodge an application for the return of the child. “He thereafter and for the first time informed her that he would no longer be returning the child to her care,” the court papers state.

In September, the father lodged an urgent application to interdict the mother from removing the child from his care. The high court in Pretoria ruled in the mother’s favour and the child was returned to her.

On October 2, the father lodged a second application to interdict the mother from leaving SA. The order made was in conflict with the previous ruling.

A third application was struck off the roll and the mother brought a fourth application to declare the second ruling null and void. The court ruled in her favour and dismissed the father’s application for leave to appeal against the order.

The father withheld the child’s travel documents, an act, the mother said, which was in contempt of court, effectively holding them “hostage” in SA for nearly three months. She applied for a new passport for the child at home affairs, adding that the department had been briefed about the court proceedings, and she subsequently travelled back to Malaysia.

The father is now approaching the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal. He said he believed the informal co-parenting relationship had soured because the mother had learnt he was in a relationship and had become a father again.

“I have been trying since this child’s birth to have him registered correctly. He was registered incorrectly against my wishes. I have an agreement that they would correct it and I had been promised and was told they were having issues with their immigration, so I should not cause trouble. If I didn’t like it, then access would be denied,” he said.

He said he had travelled overseas every six weeks to see his son during the first year of the child’s life. In the second year, he travelled regularly to Malaysia to pick the child up for visits to SA. He said he is determined to continue fighting for his son because he believes it is in the child’s best interests.

The mother, who also has a four-year-old daughter, said the custody battle “has stopped being about the child and is now about him seeking revenge and slandering and bullying me ... I would go to the ends of the earth and move mountains for my children, because I am a mother. My children have been through trauma because of this, but since returning to our home in Malaysia, they have settled into a happy, stable routine now that we are happily reunited.”