The High Court has ordered the registrar to remove the name of a Kenyan man from the birth certificate of a Caucasian child.
While issuing the ruling, Justice Roselyne Abiruli noted that the move was to prevent misleading information on the birth certificate of the child.
The ruling followed an application by the man to have his name removed from the birth certificate of the 12-year-old minor.
According to the man, he agreed to have his name on the birth certificate when the child was about to be born out of the goodness of his heart.
“The second applicant confirmed to the court that he had sworn an affidavit on October 2, 2023, agreeing to have his name expunged from the child’s birth certificate,” stated the judge.
How did his name end up on the Birth certificate?
Moreover, the man explained that the mother of the child, who is his friend and nothing else, was pregnant in 2011 when she approached him and asked for his help.
She was afraid of her strict parents and asked the man to take up the role of the child’s father.
However, when the baby was later born, the man learnt that the child was a Caucasian, meaning that his friend must have had an affair with a white man.
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By this time, the certificate already bound the two together, so the man decided to continue living his life, separate from the woman.
Court Case of removing the name from the Certificate
Unsettled, the man sued the registrar of Births and Deaths, the Civil registry and the Attorney General to have his name removed from the birth certificate 12 years later.
Both the man and woman were asked to appear before the court in the company of teh minor.
According to Justice Abiruli, the court noted that the child was indeed of a mixed race and therefore the man could not be the father.
At the same time, the child informed the court that he was aware of the ongoing process to change the name on his birth certificate.
“The court was able to observe that the child is of mixed race and the child informed the court that he was aware of the court process requiring the name of the second applicant to be expunged from his birth certificate,” added the Judge.
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The Mother giver her Account of the Matter
According to the mother of the minor, they made the decision to include the friend as the father out of ignorance.
Further, she confirmed that the two of them never married adding that the man took up parental duties of the child after birth.
