Japan's Cabinet approved draft legislation Friday to scrap a rule that has prevented the new husband of a woman who has remarried from assuming paternity over a child born within some 10 months of the woman's divorce from her previous partner.
The change is aimed at addressing a problem in which some children of divorced women have been left off family registers to avoid former husbands being recognized as fathers, leading to difficulties in the children accessing health and other services.
Under what would be the first change to the century-old Civil Code provisions regarding paternity and marriage, a rule banning women from remarrying within 100 days of a divorce, long considered discriminatory, is also set to be scrapped.
The government aims to pass the amendment in the current session of parliament.
The current code states that a child born within 300 days after the mother's divorce is presumed to belong to her former husband, regardless of whether she remarries after the 100-day ban. Under the amendment, the former husband would only be regarded as the father within the 300-day period if the woman does not remarry.
A Justice Ministry survey found about 70 percent of 793 individuals not included in family registers as of August this year had mothers who did not submit birth notifications because of the current legal paternity rule.
Many women, including those who fled domestic violence, have opted not to submit notifications of the birth of their child with their current partners in order to avoid having their former husbands recognized as the legal father.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also gave the nod to giving mothers and children the right to file for court arbitration with regard to paternity disputes.
At present, former husbands can deny paternity over children born within 300 days of a divorce.
The period for filing for arbitration will be set at within three years of knowledge about a birth. Under the current arbitration system, which has been limited to former husbands seeking to deny paternity, the period was set at one year.
The revisions also include deleting the parental right to punish children, while clearly stating that physical punishment and verbal and physical actions that harm a child's healthy development are not permissible.
