10
May
What You Should Know before filing a Divorce in Indonesia

Divorce in Indonesia can sometimes pretty easy, but it can also turn out to be an ugly proceedings. What I am going to tell you are the summary that happen in my line of work as an Indonesian lawyer practicing family law in Jakarta. I see these things happening almost everyday. I am sure you can do it easily without the advice of a legal practitioner.

I am going to write this article in two or three parts starting from documents you need to secure, and things you must and not do before you file a divorce in Indonesia. These are the things you should know before filing a divorce against your spouse in Indonesia:

  1. Prenuptial Agreement. This document is recognized by the Indonesia’s Marriage Law and therefore the court honors it as a valid premarital contract between husband and wife. Make sure your Indonesian lawyer review it before he lodges your divorce application.
  2. Marriage Certificate. If you married in Non Moslem ceremony, the Civil Registry issued you a Marriage Certificate. On the other hand, the Office of Religious Affairs (so called KUA/Kantor Urusan Agama) issued you a Marriage Booklet. The documents are the proof that your marriage was legally and officially registered. This is where your Indonesian lawyer build-up a case in court. Without it, you don’t have a case. At least keep a scanned-copy and store it in some place safe where you can access it everywhere like cloud storages such as Google Drive, Microsoft Skydrive, etc. When you have the soft copy, your lawyer will easily retrieve a duplicate or other similar documents to prove that you are legally married.
  3. Child’s Birth Certificate. The same with marriage certificate. At least you keep a copy. Original can be retrieved anytime. The birth of a child is a very important legal fact in a marriage, and a divorce case. When you want the custody of your child, a birth certificate must be supplied to prove that the child was born within the marriage.

Those three documents are very essential to establish a divorce case in Indonesia. I do hope this is useful for you. Please feel free to share it with others and make sure they know what to do to access the legal system in Indonesia. I am Asep Wijaya. Thank you for helping me spread the access to the legal system in Indonesia.

Category: Court Litigation, Family Law, Matrimonial Law  Tags: , , ,  Leave a Comment
08
Mar
Adoption for Your Step Child in Indonesia

Adopting your step-child in Indonesia is a special adoption proceedings because it takes place within a marriage between Adopting Parent and Biological Parent. Adopting your spouse’s child, sometimes referred to as a step-child adoption, can make your family feel connected. When a step-parent adopts his spouse’s child, he becomes responsible for the child both legally and financially in addition to forming emotional bond.

This type of adoption is pretty special in Indonesia. Not only because this is happening within a marriage, but this is also about sharing the custody of a child between you as the adopting parent and your spouse as the custody holder. It should not remove your spouse’s custody right and put it on you as the Adoptant. It’s more like making your spouse shares the child custody with you as if the child was born within your marriage. Both of you will be sharing parental authority in virtue of a court decree.

There are several things that you need to pay attention to:

a. Marital status of your spouse. Your spouse must legally divorce before you can adopt your step-child. Divorce in Indonesia must be carried-out in court of law. An absolute divorce decree must be issued by the court. A religious court for Moslem, and a district court for Non-Moslem.
b. Child custody of the child. You need to seek further whether your spouse is the holder of the child custody. If she/he was the holder of the custody, you will find it in the divorce decree. Usually divorce comes together with child custody. This is very important since she will be sharing the custody with you.
c. Affidavit and consent. You may be supporting the child on daily basis for daily living expenses, education, etc but you must enter into an affidavit to make it more even official certifying that you will be responsible for that. As for your spouse, she/he will have to consent to the proceedings. So, the two of you initiating reciprocal actions for the adoption.
d. Court order is required. Lastly, you must get a court order to make everything legitimate and conclusive legal binding. Remember, supporting documents and supplying at least two witnesses are required for the success of the litigation proceedings at the court.
e. Civil registry proceedings. When the court award you with court order, you must forward it to civil registry office fur further registration.

There you go. Five steps that you need to do before you adopt the step-child of your spouse. Some might not familiar with the issues. Therefore, it is very important for them to have the access to this information so they would be able to access the legal system. Please feel free to forward this information to everyone who might need it. I am Asep Wijaya. Thank you for helping me spread the access to the legal system in Indonesia.

Category: Court Litigation, Family Law, Matrimonial Law  Tags: , ,  Comments off
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