Despite the two revisions to custody and maintenance law, which, according to parliamentary mandate, pursued the core objective of promoting joint parenthood for separated parents, around 10 percent of all children of separation and divorce in Switzerland still lose contact with one parent – in over 90 percent of cases with the father.
While the Federal Court, with two courageous landmark decisions in the fourth quarter of 2020, recognized this sad state of affairs and appears unwilling to tolerate it any longer, the wheels of the upstream courts and enforcement bodies grind slowly, and there are hardly any significant changes in the lives of the affected children compared to the time before the revision.
The umbrella organization for shared parenting, GeCoBi , conducted research to investigate why this is the case.
The result is the research paper published here.