27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. has the right to live with mother or father once the period of custody is concluded or requisite age of custody is completed.48 Article 42 (a) of Family Act stipulates that custody of the child entrusted to the mother is dependent on her marital status, and the grounds upon which she loses custody rights is mother’s remarriage and the father remarrying carries no such consequences.49 Custody cases filed at Family Court remained low, at an average of 197 cases per year from 2008 to 2013.50Thus as stated in paragraph 118 of state report “not all couples that have a child will necessarily bring a custody dispute to court.” While most cases were decided in mother’s favour (46 percent on an average per year) there was somewhat an equal distribution of custody cases decided in the father’s favor and to a third party (on an average 28 percent and 26 percent per year). An assessment done on the Child Participation in the Maldives commended on the explicit legal requirement to consider children’s views, while highlighting the inconsistency on the basis of their gender.51 Generally there is a negative perception about single mothers and divorced women and society assumes the responsibility of breakup of the marriage on women.52 One of the challenges of a single mother without assistance from father after separation include financial difficulties as they find it difficult to seek employment due to childcare responsibilities and dependency on other people and lower quality of life for the child.53 An average of 277 cases per year was filed on child maintenance from 2008 to 2013 at Family Court.54While an average 47 cases per year were related to failure to give maintenance/alimony, an average of 16 cases per year was filed to relate to garnishment regarding maintenance/alimony of children. In 2010, government introduced a monthly allowance to single parents of MVR1000 (US US $64) per child up to maximum of three children per family (MVR3000 per family (US US $194.5)).This amount for single parent allowance appears to be arbitrarily set and there are no estimates on how many eligible beneficiaries remain outside the domain of the social protection schemes.55An average of 5228 children per year benefited from single parent allowance social protection scheme.56 Comparison of cases on child maintenance/alimony submitted to court, coupled with high divorce rate and number of child beneficiaries of single parent allowance gives an indication of the struggle single mothers endures. Legal guardianship rests with father and in cases where child custody is granted to the mother, father is entrusted to provide child support/alimony payments to the mother which was a minimum monthly amount of MVR 450 per child (US $ 29). This amount for alimony was considered insignificant by the government authorities as well. Thus in March 2014, government enforced amendments to family regulation which required a father who has more than one child to pay a monthly MVR 1000 (US $64) per child and if he has one child to pay monthly MVR 2000 (US $ 129) as child maintenance/alimony. This is a progressive development and presently single mothers who receive child support through court can also apply for single parent allowance. In 2010 government also introduced financial benefits targeting foster child (MVR 1000 (US $64)) and parents taking care of a foster child (MVR 500 (US $32)). From 2010 to 2012 an average of 45 children per year benefited from this social scheme. Employment Act (2/2008) guarantees 60 days of maternity leave for females and 3 days of paternity leave is granted to males following birth of a child. During this period maternity leave was the only leave that was inclusive of weekends and public holidays, till Civil Service Commission (CSC) Page 9 of 39