Child custody in Guinea-Bissau

Both parents exercise parental responsibility together, and the child's interests come first.

The parent who recognises the child holds parental responsibility. Where only the mother has recognised the child, she holds it alone until the father does so.

The unmarried father, in one line: Depends on the form of the marriage and on the community.

The court decides where the child lives and the contact of the other parent, by the child's interests. Important decisions stay joint in many countries of the tradition.

The child's views are heard according to age and maturity.

Where both parents have parental responsibility, taking a child to live abroad generally needs both parents' agreement or a court's permission. Check the rules before any move.

Guinea-Bissau is not in force under the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention, so there is no treaty route to ask for a child to be returned. Local advice is essential.

• Many families live under customary law, which varies from one community to the next and is often unwritten. In some communities a child belongs to the father's family, in others to the mother's, and the courts increasingly apply the child's best interests whatever the custom says.

Guinea-Bissau 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 Guinea-Bissau legal-system profile in the Legal Families Atlas →
Who owns what in a marriage in Guinea-Bissau? →

• JuriGlobe, University of Ottawa: world legal systems
• World Bank: Women, Business and the Law (country data on parenthood and marriage)