Child custody in France

Parental authority lies with both parents equally. They exercise it jointly and must decide important matters together.

The mother holds parental authority and may exercise it alone. Joint exercise by both is the principle, with an exception where the father acknowledges the child more than a year after the birth. In that case he gets joint authority only through a joint declaration to the court or a decision of the family court judge.

The unmarried father, in one line: Both parents have it, married or not, once the father's paternity is established.

Separation does not change the rules: both parents keep joint authority and decide together in the child's interests. If they cannot agree, the family court judge decides, weighing past practice, the child's views, each parent's willingness to respect the other's rights, and any violence. The judge can give exercise to one parent if that serves the child, and sets the child's habitual residence: with one parent (with access for the other), alternating between homes, or otherwise. Alternating residence does not have to mean equal time.

Minors must be heard in all cases if they are capable of understanding. No minimum age is stated.

The family court judge can forbid a minor to leave the country without both parents' consent, especially where a parent may go abroad and not return. There is a fast-track procedure for wrongful removal of a child.

France 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.

France belongs to the Civil law family. Family law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

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

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