She forgot the medicine.. so she lost custody of her son…!!
On 11th of November 2020, in one of the rare judicial precedents, Dubai Personal Status Court dropped a mother’s custody of her child, because she forgot to give the child medicine on more than one occasion.November
Parents had previously agreed to divorce in 2016 according to a divorce agreement documented before the Dubai Personal Status Court. The father had agreed in this agreement that the mother would retain custody of the child, who was then 4 years old.
The child had a serious heart syndrome that needed special care, and also required that the child not be subjected to severe nervous pressure. The medicines worked to keep the child’s blood pressure low in order to keep the aorta away from any stress, which also required the child to be subjected to continuous and careful medical supervision. Also, the medical supervision should not be changed except within very narrow limits, because the medical file of the patient with this syndrome must be stable and follow regular testing and x-rays in the long term.
Before the court, the father presented several WhatsApp messages that he exchanged with the mother, which prove that the mother was forgetting to give the child (8 years old at the time of filing the case) daily medicine, according to her own confessions in these messages, as she justified this forgetfulness with various excuses.
Despite the variety of reasons that the father enumerated in order to demand that he drop the mother’s custody of his son, including, for example, the mother’s marriage to a new spouse and her neglect of the child, leaving him at her family’s home for long hours without her supervision or follow-up, the interesting thing about the judgment issued in this case is that the court has actually dropped mother’s custody for the main reason that she had repeatedly forgotten to give the child his medicine at the specified time, and the court relied on WhatsApp messages that the mother could not deny its argument.
This judgment is considered a true and accurate judicial application for the intention of the United Arab Emirates legislator to surround the issue of custody with many controls and conditions.
Abstract criteria and general judgments such as the mother’s marriage to a new spouse or even the end of the custody age are not what the court consider while evaluating the issue of custody, while we can only say is that the real compass that the Emirati courts follow is the child’s direct interest, which is revealed by many of the surrounding circumstances which varies from case to another.
