High Court rules both parents must be present at child custody hearings

The High Court has ruled on Monday that both parents must be summoned to court before a child is questioned regarding cases of child custody in the event of divorce.

The court ruled as such in a hearing in which it overruled a Family Court sentence that handed custody of a child to an Indian mother rather than her Maldivian father.

The High Court sentence claimed that it is not just to let the child decide who he or she wanted to live with in the absence of any one parent, and on those grounds overturned the Family Court verdict.