Courts favour grandmom over father in child custody plea

abu dhabi — A father, who wanted the custody of his two-yearold son stripped from the child’s maternal grandmother and be granted to him instead, has had his request rejected.

The Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi upheld earlier rulings by lower courts that turned down the custody application of the Arab father and ruled that the boy remains with his grandmother. The Court said it was in the best interest of the child to stay with his maternal grandmother for proper care and better upbringing.

The child’s mother died three weeks after she delivered the baby. After her death, the father agreed that the child could be with his maternal grandmother. The grandmother took good care of him since the time her daughter passed on. When the child was almost a year old, the father who had by then married another woman, applied for custody of the child, stressing that the boy had passed the nursing stage and that it was better if he stays with him now. He stated that he and his new wife would take good care of the child. Both the first instance and appeal courts rejected the father’s custody request. The man challenged the rulings at the UAE’s top court, which instead upheld the verdicts of the lower courts. The Supreme Court judge said that there was no justification for the father taking away the small child from his grandmother, given the fact that she has taken good care of him since the death of her daughter.