Interesting story from WELT online.

The German supreme court has decided that there should not be a problem if the family courts decree a shared-parenting construct. The default up till now was the the every other weekend model.

But as always there is a major catch (or two)

• It must be in the child’s interest (Kindeswohl).
• The child must agree (and will be interviewed by the court)
• The parents cannot be in clinch with each other.

Both of these points can be torpedoed quickly enough by any abusing parent. In particular the last point. A couple of calls to social services alleging something and no chance.

So it sounds good, but only in very few cases per year when both parents agree.

And as a footnote – There still isn’t a reasonable decision how to “split” the child maintenance in cases of shared parenting. At the moment it is split 50:50 when the time involved is 50:50, but the absent parent still pays 100% child maintenance costs even if he looks after this children up to 49% of the time. So what is going to happen in some families when the custodial parent is going to lose several hundred Euros a month 😉

Good idea from the title, but effectively useless for most absent parents.

via Trennungskinder: Gerichte dürfen Eltern geteilte Betreuung vorschreiben – WELT