THE LAW OF PERSONS AND FAMILY LAW JACQUELINE HEATON* LEGISLATION CHILDREN’S ACT The Children’s Act 38 of 2005 is one of the most important and far-reaching pieces of legislation in the area of the law of persons and family law in recent South African history. It radically changes aspects of the law of parent and child and extends the rights and protection that children enjoy. It also codifies aspects of the law of parent and child. The Act is an amended version of selected provisions of the draft Children’s Bill that the Department of Social Welfare pub- lished for comment in 2002. That draft Bill was itself an amended version of the draft Children’s Bill that was attached to the South African Law Commission’s Report on the Review of the Child Care Act Project 110 (2002). When the Children’s Bill 70 of 2003 was tabled in Parliament, constitutional concerns about its mixed national and provincial nature caused its withdrawal. The parts that have implications for provincial government were excised from the Bill, and the parts that have implications for national government were resubmitted under the same title — the Chil- dren’s Bill 70 of 2003. A substantially pruned version of the excised provisions was later submitted to Parliament as the Children’s Amendment Bill 19 of 2006. The Children’s Amend- ment Bill eventually became the Children’s Amendment Act 41 of 2007, which is discussed below in this chapter, while version 70D of the Children’s Bill was eventually enacted as the Children’s Act. Sections 1–11, 13–21, 27, 30, 31, 35–40, 130–4, 305(1)(b) and (c), 305(3)–(7), 307–11 and 313–15, and the second, third, fifth, seventh, and ninth items of Schedule 4 of the Children’s Act came into operation on 1 July 2007 (Proc 13 GG 30030 of 29 June 2007). The scope of these sections is such that a detailed discussion of all of them is impossible here. I shall merely alert the reader to selected issues. * BLC LLB (Pret) LLM (Unisa). Professor of Private Law in the University of South Africa, Pretoria. 885