One of the hardest things about divorce is the impact of the whole situation on the children and the questions about where and with whom the children will continue to live, how they will see the other parent and who will pay child support and how much.
TheCzech Statistical Office states the following based on available data regarding population movements in 2022:
“In 2022,54,500 couples entered into marriage, 17% more than a year earlier and just under 400 fewer than in 2019, the peak of a six-year rise in marriage rates.Therewere 19.3 thousand divorces, down 1.8 thousand year-on-year.“
The courts in the Czech Republic work on the principle that children must be affected as little as possible by divorce. Parents should also work on the basis of such principles and find an amicable solution in the form of an agreement and thus an uncontested divorce.
Tip: Read how divorce proceedings in court work when it comes to marriages with minor children.
If you find yourself in a difficult situation and you are going through a divorce with minor children, you must take into account that before you get to the divorce court, there will be a children’s court. Therefore, one spouse must file a petition with the court to determine the minor children’s circumstances. Of course, the ideal is if the spouses agree beforehand and then the court just approves their agreement. An agreement can also be made at any time during the court proceedings. However, if the agreement fails, the judge will make the decision himself in a judgment. Remember that all decisions made by the court are guided by the best interests of the child. If your agreement or the terms do not match this, the court may decide differently.
Tip: We’ve compiled everything you need to know about petitioning for a modification of minor children in an article on the documents needed for divorce.
“The agreement will make it easier for you and your children to get a start in life. You will also save yourself years of litigation, stress, paying for expert reports, etc. If it would be absolutely impossible to reach an agreement, do not use the generic templates circulating on the Internet for proposals to modify custody and maintenance of minor children. Simply omitting something or failing to provide all the information and documents can make the whole process much longer.”
The court deciding on children basically has the following three options for deciding custody of minor children:
Have the support and confidence of an attorney
In practice, we see that spouses in the whirlwind of hurt feelings often neglect what is most important. A divorce lawyer will handle both the negotiations with your spouse and the drafting of all the necessary documents and filing of the petition for you. His or her goal will be to divorce you as quickly as possible while achieving the maximum possible.
No, the court does not have to address this. It will depend on whether the parents are able to reach an agreement. If only one parent has custody of the child, the other parent has the right to see the child regularly, to make phone calls, to be informed about the child. However, the court will only regulate access when it is not working between the parents and they ask the court to do so.
Where it cannot be done otherwise, the court will then issue a detailed judgment, stating, for example, that the mother will pick up her daughter Anna with her packed belongings every odd Friday at 3 p.m. at her address, where she will be picked up by her father and returned again on Sunday at 6 p.m. Particular arrangements are then made for contact during holidays and public holidays.
The child’s best interests are always the main consideration. That is why there is also a social worker in court to find out the family situation and to defend the child’s interests. What is important to the judge is the child’s personality, especially his or her abilities and aptitudes in relation to the developmental possibilities and living conditions of the parents, as well as the child’s emotional orientation and background, the educational abilities of each parent, and the current and expected stability of the educational environment. Of course, the court also takes into account the child’s emotional ties to his or her siblings, grandparents and other relatives and should decide in such a way that the child does not lose these family contacts.
The judge will also be interested in who has predominantly cared for the child so far and will look at where the child is better placed to develop healthily and successfully. Another very important issue is how the parents get on with each other regarding the children, whether they are able to get along. The parent who boycotts the handover of the child and makes various mischiefs may then be punished by not being entrusted with the child, even though he or she has asked for it.
Tip: We have discussed the rights of grandparents to see their grandchildren in a separate article.
The term, which began to be used in Germany and gradually spread further into Europe, is gradually gaining ground in the Czech Republic and is entering the repertoire of some judges. It is a way of resolving the divorce of parents with minor children in such a way that the judge or mediator tries as much as possible to reach an agreement between the parents. This is of great value and can take precedence even over the opinion of the court. The principles are:
Tip: Dealing with a surname change after divorce? Learn how to do it.
Child support or alimony is not directly defined by law, but it is commonly understood to mean the regular payments that parents make to their children when they are not directly physically caring for them – for example, if they do not have custody of them after the divorce.
Every parent is legally obliged to support their child, i.e. to provide them with housing, food, clothing, medicine, school fees, in short, all the basic needs. Depending on the parent’s abilities, financial circumstances and standard of living, child support also includes payment for various clubs, trips, culture, sports, holidays and, where appropriate, savings.
As we have already seen above, maintenance depends on many factors, primarily the choice of childcare (i.e. whether one parent provides the majority of the care or whether the care is equal). The specific amount then also depends on the financial circumstances of both parents, the interests, the health of the child and a number of other factors. In late 2022, the Department of Justice introduced a new child support table. While it does not, of course, specify the amount that you can confidently recover in court, it is intended to help give parents an idea of the indicative amount. In connection with its publication, some of the principles for calculating child maintenance have been slightly modified and we have discussed them in detail in our separate article.
However, the tables are not binding and the court does not have to decide according to them. On the contrary, they must always take into account the specific situation, what the child’s needs are, what the parent’s possibilities are and, of course, how much time the parent spends with the child personally. The child contributes to the parents’ standard of living and therefore maintenance varies.
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