Man pays maintenance for another man’s child
A Bulawayo man, who is a manager at National Foods in Harare, has been paying $261 maintenance for another man’s child for the past eight months.
However, the Maintenance Court in Bulawayo on Friday cancelled the maintenance order after two paternity tests showed that Mr Ngqabutho Moyo was not the father of the child in question.
Mr Moyo was once customarily married to Ms Audrey Tanya Asani, but the couple separated sometime in 2008, prompting the woman to seek legal recourse for him to maintain the child.
Ms Asani had won the maintenance case at the Maintenance Court in Bulawayo against her former husband who was ordered to pay $261 per month for the child’s upkeep to cover groceries, school fees and other expenses.
The child, a boy, was born on 16 September 2009.
Mr Moyo, in his affidavit told the court that the child was not his because Ms Asani fell pregnant a year after they stopped staying together.
He requested to have paternity tests which were done in 2010 and showed that he was not the father of the child.
Ms Asani challenged the results saying they were not conclusive and reliable as she maintained that Mr Moyo was the father of her son.
Mr Moyo had to pay more paternity tests fees amounting to $600 and R1 600 for a second round of tests which were done at Unistel Medical Laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa.
In the meantime, Mr Moyo was still paying the maintenance fee, as ordered by the court pending the results from the tests, according to court papers.
According to court documents, Mr Moyo was “excluded from being the father of the four-year-old boy with a degree of certainty.”
The latest results prompted Bulawayo magistrate Mr Victor Mpofu to cancel the maintenance on the grounds that Mr Moyo is not the father of Ms Asani’s child, as per the paternity results, thereby putting to rest the matter.
maintenance National Foods court