Child custody in Norway

Married parents have joint parental responsibility.

Parents who live together when the child is born have joint responsibility. If they do not live together, the mother has it alone until they agree on joint responsibility.

The unmarried father, in one line: The mother has it; the father needs a step: a joint declaration, registration, agreement, or living with the mother at the birth.

Parents who share responsibility keep it after separation. They can agree where the child lives, or have the court decide. The court can order that the child lives with both parents in turn if that is best for the child.

A child who is seven or older has a right to give an opinion, and the opinion carries more weight as the child gets older.

Where responsibility is joint, a move abroad with the child needs both parents' consent.

Norway 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.

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

• Lovdata: the Children Act