Child custody in Cyprus

Parental responsibility is exercised by both parents jointly as a general rule.

The official fact sheet does not say who holds parental responsibility for a child born outside marriage, or how a father acquires it. Check with a lawyer in Cyprus.

The unmarried father, in one line: The official source does not say; check before relying on it.

The court decides. It may give parental responsibility to one parent, to both jointly, or to a third person. If it gives it to one parent it can also set the other parent's access. With joint custody the child will usually live equally with both parents. Sole custody does not let one parent decide everything without consulting the other.

The official fact sheet does not say when or how the child is heard.

The official fact sheet lists travel abroad and abduction among the issues a judge can regulate, without giving rules.

Cyprus is a party to the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention, which lets a parent ask for a child wrongly taken to another country to be returned. It works only with countries that have accepted its accession, so check the other country on the treaty status table.

Within the EU, Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 (called Brussels IIb) decides which country's courts handle parental responsibility: in principle the courts of the country where the child habitually lives, and it speeds up the return of a child wrongly taken to another member state. Denmark does not take part in it.

Cyprus belongs to the Mixed: civil and common law family. Family law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

Read the Cyprus legal-system profile in the Legal Families Atlas →
Who owns what in a marriage in Cyprus? →
Divorce rate and trend in Cyprus →

• European e-Justice Portal: parental responsibility, child custody and contact rights in Cyprus