Law changes in Portugal regarding shared residence
Cristina Dias
Cristina Dias.
Phd in Law; Full Professor and Dean - Law School of University of Minho (PORTUGAL); Director of the Master Course on Child, Family and Inheritance Law on Law School of University of Minho; Researcher at JusGov- Research Centre.
Rossana Cruz
Phd in Law; Assistant Professor - Law School of University of Minho (PORTUGAL) Researcher at JusGov- Research Centre.
The Portuguese Civil Code states that the court shall determine the child's residence and visiting rights in accordance with the child's interest and shall take into account all relevant circumstances, namely the willingness expressed by each of the parents to promote regular relations of the child with the other parent (paragraph 5 of article 1906). Until 2020 there wasn’t a clear legal reference to a shared residence.
More recently, Law n. 65/2020, 4th November, introduced a new paragraph 6 to article 1906 of the Civil Code, establishing that, when it corresponds to the superior interest of the child, the court may determine the alternated residence of the child with each of the parents, independently of mutual agreement and without jeopardize the duty of the maintenance/child support (that was a divergent issue before 2020, since some argued that if the child spent equal amount of time with each parent, there wasn’t a need to set child support).
We will present a study on the current legislative solution in the Portuguese legal system and its repercussions on the courts' decisions.