Does family transcend blood?

During a divorce or a break-up of a relationship where there are children involved, the top concern of each party usually is the children’s wellbeing.

What happens when a blended family splits? Or a marriage where the children biologically belong to one parent? It looks like the non-biological parent can easily disentangle her life from her that of her ex’s – after all there are no blood ties, right?

“Well, not quite,” Sally, a 33-year-old event planner says. She draws from experience. When her six-year customary marriage ended, all she wanted was to move on. The man had been emotionally abusive and she was angry.

For a few weeks after she moved out of their house, all she could focus on was how much he had hurt her. “Honestly, at that point, I wasn’t even thinking about his daughter,” she says.

New relationship territory

Then, one evening, about four months after the separation, her ex’s 11-year-old daughter called Sally from the house girl’s phone. She had begun her period and needed help.

“That was when I knew that even though my role in her life was ambiguous, it was there. I couldn’t just walk away,” she says.

Sally doesn’t have children of her own. For six years, Sally had been there for birthday parties, late night hospital visits and teacher-parent conferences.

She had practically filled the mother void in this little girl’s life and while doing it, had forged a separate, distinct relationship with her.

There are no rules when it comes to step-parent relations after divorce and for the past year, Sally has had to learn how to navigate this new relationship territory.

She put her ill feelings towards her ex aside and worked out a plan that allows her to have the child over at her house for a week or two each holiday. Also, they talk regularly over the phone.

“Her birth mother re-married and has a new family. This little girl still calls me Mum. Surely, family transcends blood lines,” she says.

If the relationship you shared with your stepchild was strained, your break-up might not radically affect a child but if this relationship was functioning, a break-up could be the same as being separated from the biological parent.

This is according to child psychologist Julius Gitari. If you choose to remain in your stepchild’s life, he stresses that this contact must be consistent.

“On and off contact might have more deep running effects than just cutting off all contact,” he says.

By every means possible

Sally is lucky to have a fairly civil relationship with her ex which has allowed her to remain active in her stepdaughter’s life.

What happens if a couple had an acrimonious split and can’t see eye to eye? Can the non-biological parent go to court to fight to be involved in the child’s life?

From his experience litigating divorce cases, Nairobi-based lawyer Patrick Mwangi says that in the event of a break-up, the non-biological parent has minimal rights over the child unless he or she had legally adopted the child.

Even then, if the biological parent is alive and able, the court is unlikely to grant the non-biological parent custodial rights.

His advice for a person seeking to remain in a stepchild’s life is to try and find a middle-ground away from the courts.

This means that especially with younger children, the non-biological parent is at the mercy of the biological parent.  “Sometimes this means doing whatever it takes to maintain this relationship,” says Laban, a single father of one.

He met his stepdaughter when she was barely a year old and was married to her mother for two years, during which Laban’s daughter was born.

When this marriage came to an end and his ex allowed him to move out with his daughter, he was afraid that this would mean the end of his relationship with his stepdaughter.

Her argument for keeping the child away from him was that she was not his. Seeing an opportunity, Laban offered financial support for the child. Now, he gets to have both children in his house regularly.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it the way that he does. The women he dates can’t understand why he insists on supporting a child over whom he has no legal obligations, and they end up assuming that he is stuck in the past or accusing him of still having feelings for his ex.

“Divorce marks the end of a marriage not the end of parenting,” he explains his decision.