Child custody in the Philippines

The father and the mother exercise parental authority jointly over their legitimate children.

The mother has sole parental authority over a child born outside marriage. A father who acknowledges the child can ask the court for custody or visitation.

The unmarried father, in one line: The mother has it; the father needs a court order.

The court decides custody by the child's best interests. A child under seven should not be separated from the mother, unless the court finds a compelling reason.

The court gives special weight to the choice of a child over seven, unless the parent chosen is unfit.

A child needs the other parent's consent, or a court's, to travel abroad. The Philippines is a party to the Hague Child Abduction Convention.

The Philippines 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.

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

• Lawphil: the Family Code of the Philippines