Child custody in Eswatini

In a civil marriage both parents are guardians and share parental responsibility. Under customary law the father or his family may have the main say.

The mother usually has custody of a child born outside marriage, and the father can gain rights by acknowledging the child, by agreement or by a court order.

The unmarried father, in one line: Depends on the form of the marriage and on the community.

The court decides custody and contact by the child's best interests. A young child usually stays with the mother, with contact for the father.

Courts in this tradition take account of the child's wishes according to age and maturity.

Where both parents have parental responsibility, taking a child to live abroad generally needs both parents' agreement or a court's permission. Check the rules before any move.

Eswatini is not in force under the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention, so there is no treaty route to ask for a child to be returned. Local advice is essential.

• Many families live under customary law, which varies from one community to the next and is often unwritten. In some communities a child belongs to the father's family, in others to the mother's, and the courts increasingly apply the child's best interests whatever the custom says.

Eswatini belongs to the Civil law family. Family law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

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

• JuriGlobe, University of Ottawa: world legal systems
• World Bank: Women, Business and the Law (country data on parenthood and marriage)