Child custody in Mexico

Both parents have parental authority.

Parental authority belongs to the parents who have acknowledged the child, though the details differ from state to state.

The unmarried father, in one line: Differs by state, region or province.

Parental authority continues after divorce. The court decides custody (guarda y custodia) by the child's best interests, and an increasing number of states favour shared custody.

The child's opinion is heard according to age and maturity.

The official sources do not give a simple rule on this point; where parents share responsibility, taking a child to live abroad generally needs both parents' agreement or a court's permission.

Mexico 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.

• Each of the 32 states has its own civil code, so the answer depends on the state. This entry describes only the usual pattern.

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

• Chamber of Deputies of Mexico: federal and state codes