Taking family wars online fails test of responsibility
Going to court to secure child support requires tight facts to mount a strong case, while resorting to cyber wars is a no-no for a Leader of Family Business. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
What you need to know:
Leaders of Family Business should never take sides in family disputes that involve a staff’s family members.
Resist the urge to publicly engage with estranged spouses with regard to parental responsibility.
Carefully guard yourself from unverifiable public information from anonymous sources.
“You shall not bear a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. Exodus 23:1
Early in 2011 at the height of a battle over visitation rights and monthly maintenance, Jasmine (not real name) decided to approach her husband’s employer to ask that a portion of his salary be paid to her for upkeep and that of the children.
While the management of the local multinational company was sympathetic to her cause and identified with her plight, they stated that they could not legally divert any portion of her husband’s salary without either his consent or a valid court order.
Brief affair
Embittered by this decision on a matter she thought would have been ruled in her favour, Jasmine accused the company of being corrupt and unfriendly to families.
In 2013, Zainab (not real name), upon the advice of her group of friends, decided to take Kioko (not real name) with whom she had had a brief affair to court over maintenance for their son. Even though she did not quite need the money since she was a successful upwardly mobile Leader of Family Business, Zainab chose this course of action to “prove” that she was a woman of virtue and force Kioko to take partial responsibility.
From the start, the case was plagued with problems. Her lawyer was expensive and the court process required her to prove Kioko’s culpability through a costly DNA test.
Thereafter, even after the tests proved that Kioko was the child’s father, Zainab only had proof of a tenth of Kioko’s income meaning that the maintenance the court could force him to give amounted to Sh 1,350 per month.
Kioko disputed this and the appeal is ongoing. In retrospect, Zainab regrets going to all this expense for such a pittance.
More recently, Anyango*, aggrieved by her former boyfriend’s refusal to provide support for their son and incensed by Zainab’s frustration with extracting maintenance, decided to post this man’s picture and contact details on a name-and-shame Internet site.
While her claims seemed legitimate, her boyfriend’s crude comments in response to her claim not only threw into doubt the parentage of her son but also questioned her morals, seeing that her affair with the man ran concurrently with an elderly wealthy individual.
When she realised that the fight was destined for the ethical cesspool, she quickly withdrew and deleted her account. She prays that her son will never hear of the things that were said about him and his mother on cyberspace.
Where there is a frustration with a supposedly slow judicial system and the desire to join online vigilantes to mete out mob justice on accused individuals, Leaders of Family Business need to be extremely careful about how they act on information that is in the public domain and the actions they take.
Private matters
Because of their nature, Leaders of Family Business may be tempted to take sides in what are, in essence, private matters without taking time to properly investigate.
No Leader of Family Business ought ever to seek redress to private matters in the court of public opinion nor descend to the point of openly trading insults with an estranged partner. That is below the dignity of Leaders of Family Business.
In the age of instant communication, Leaders of Family Business should be careful about believing unverifiable information especially if this comes from sources that may be suspect and driven by malicious intentions.
Mr Mutua is a Humphrey Fellow and a leadership development consultant focused on family businesses.
