Three distinct questions that get confused
When parents separate, the law settles three different things, and confusing them is the source of most conflicts. Parental responsibility: who decides the important questions — school, health, religion, travel. Residence: where the child lives, and on what rhythm they see the other parent. Child support: who pays what for the child. The three are independent: a parent can have no residence and keep full parental responsibility; shared residence does not necessarily cancel support; a parent who does not pay does not lose the right to see the child, and a parent who does not see the child still has to pay.
This page describes what most countries have in common. Amounts, scales, procedures and agencies are in the country sheets on divorce. And if you are looking for how to have your child looked after while you work, that is another page: childcare.
Parental responsibility is not divided, it continues
In the great majority of legal systems, separation changes nothing about parental responsibility: it remains exercised jointly, as before, whether or not the parents were married. Each continues to decide the important choices with the other, each has access to the school and medical records, each can handle everyday matters when the child is with them. A court gives responsibility to one parent alone only for serious reasons — violence, total disinterest, incapacity — and not because the other has “custody”. A few countries are exceptions, distinguishing physical custody, often given to the mother for young children, from legal guardianship, which stays with the father; the country sheets flag them.
Residence: shared, primary, or tailor-made
Shared residence — the child lives equally with each parent, alternate weeks or on a shorter rhythm for small children — has spread wherever the law allows it, and the studies that follow the children concerned are rather favourable, on two conditions: that the parents live close enough to each other, and that they manage to talk to each other a minimum. Primary residence with one parent, with contact and staying rights for the other — classically every other weekend and half the holidays — remains the most frequent arrangement, often because it is what the parents choose, not what the judge imposes. Between the two anything is possible, and a written calendar — the “parenting plan” — is worth more than the fairest formula: it sets out the days, the times, the handover places, the holidays, the birthdays, who takes the child to the doctor, how a change is notified. Conflicts rarely arise from the principle, almost always from the details nobody wrote down.
The deciding criterion, everywhere, is the child’s best interests, not fairness between the parents. In practice judges look at: previous practice (who did what), the child’s age, the distance between homes, each parent’s ability to respect the other’s place, and, from a certain age, what the child says. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives the child the right to be heard; the age from which this happens in practice, and the weight of the child’s words, vary a great deal. What the child says is never a decision they are made to carry: it is one element among others.
Child support: how it is calculated, almost everywhere
Child support is owed by the parent the child does not live with, or by the higher earner in shared residence. It rests on two quantities: the child’s needs and each parent’s resources. Many countries publish a scale — a percentage of the paying parent’s income, decreasing with the number of children, or a grid crossing income and time spent — that serves as a reference without binding the judge. Parents can agree on a different amount, provided it does not harm the child; an approved agreement has the same force as a judgment, and that is what makes it enforceable if the other stops paying.
Three practical rules apply almost everywhere. Support is indexed, or reviewable, to follow the cost of living: an amount set ten years ago is worth nothing if it has not been revalued. It is modifiable when the situation changes — job loss, a new birth, a child who changes residence —, but only for the future and by a new decision or a new agreement: stopping payment on one’s own initiative because one earns less is a debt that accumulates. And it does not stop at eighteen in most countries: it lasts as long as the child is studying or is not self-sufficient, within limits that vary — one of the points that differ most from one country to another.
Not to be confused with maintenance between ex-spouses — spousal maintenance, alimony, compensatory allowance depending on the country —, which follows other rules and does not exist everywhere. The Divorce page tells them apart.
When support is not paid
Arrears are massive everywhere — depending on the country, a third to a half of the support due is not paid in full — and the law has built tools accordingly: attachment of wages or bank accounts, recovery by a public agency that sometimes advances the sums and pursues the debtor, various bans (driving licence, passport) in some countries, and, in several, a criminal offence beyond a few months of default. The receiving parent generally has to take a step — the debt does not recover itself —, but has nothing to negotiate: the decision exists, it is enforced. Conversely, the parent who really can no longer pay is better off asking for a review at once rather than waiting for enforcement.
Moving, especially abroad
A parent who moves far away, and even more so to another country, with the child without the other’s agreement or a court’s, commits in most countries a serious wrong, and internationally an abduction within the meaning of the 1980 Hague Convention, which more than a hundred States apply: the child’s return to the country of habitual residence is ordered in the great majority of cases, often within weeks, without the judge of the arrival country examining the custody question. The practical rule fits in one sentence: before leaving, the other parent’s written agreement or a court decision; without one or the other, you do not leave. For couples of two nationalities this is the first thing to settle, and the page on the international couple says more. Support set in one country is recovered in another thanks to the 2007 Hague Convention on the recovery of maintenance and, within the European Union, to a dedicated regulation; it is slow, but it works.
Mediation, before the judge
More and more countries require at least an information meeting on family mediation before going to court over a disagreement about the children, and some make it compulsory. It is not a formality: agreements reached in mediation are respected far better than imposed decisions, because the parents built them. It is not suitable where there has been violence, or when one of the two is only playing for time; in that case, the judge. The page on getting help describes who does what — mediator, lawyer, judge — and the estimate of cost and time gives an order of magnitude.
What harms children, and what protects them
It is not the separation that does the most damage, it is the conflict that lasts. Longitudinal studies are consistent: children of separated parents who cooperate do as well as others; those who live for years in the middle of open conflict — with or without separation — do less well. That gives a few simple rules. Do not make the child carry messages, do not question them about the other house, do not criticise the other parent in front of them, do not ask them to choose. Keep to the calendar even when angry: a child nobody came to collect remembers that longer than an argument. And pay the support, because children find out, sooner or later, who paid.
Frequently asked questions
If the other parent does not pay, can I refuse to hand over the child?
No, in none of the systems we describe: the child’s right to see both parents and the obligation to contribute are independent. Withholding the child exposes you to sanctions, and does not help recover the support. The right answer is enforcement.
Is support due in shared residence?
Often yes, reduced, when the parents’ incomes are very different: the child is entitled to the same standard of living in both homes. When incomes are close, parents generally share costs without support, or open a joint account for the child’s expenses.
From what age is the child heard, and from what age do they decide?
They are heard, in most countries, as soon as they are capable of forming a view — in practice often around seven to twelve depending on the jurisdiction, sometimes with no fixed age. They do not decide before adulthood; but a teenager who firmly refuses a residence is rarely forced, because force does not work.
What happens to support if the paying parent has new children?
A new birth is a ground for review, not for cancellation: children of the first relationship do not come after those of the second, and scales generally provide for a division between all dependent children.
And if we were not married?
For the child, it changes almost nothing in most countries: the same rules of parental responsibility, residence and support, once parentage is established with both parents. What changes is that there is no divorce procedure to settle everything at once: you have to apply to the court, or have an agreement approved, specifically for the child.