Child custody in Greece

Parental responsibility is exercised jointly by both parents, and decisions must take the child's interests into account.

The official fact sheet does not say how an unmarried father acquires parental responsibility. Check with a lawyer in Greece.

The unmarried father, in one line: The official source does not say; check before relying on it.

No default is stated. The court decides. It may give responsibility to one parent, or to both if they agree and the child's residence is fixed at the same time. It may also divide responsibility between them or give it to a third person. Joint responsibility means decisions about the child's care are made jointly.

The official fact sheet does not say when or how the child is heard.

The official fact sheet does not cover moving.

Greece is a party to the 1980 Hague Child Abduction Convention, which lets a parent ask for a child wrongly taken to another country to be returned. It works only with countries that have accepted its accession, so check the other country on the treaty status table.

Within the EU, Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 (called Brussels IIb) decides which country's courts handle parental responsibility: in principle the courts of the country where the child habitually lives, and it speeds up the return of a child wrongly taken to another member state. Denmark does not take part in it.

Greece 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 Greece legal-system profile in the Legal Families Atlas →
Who owns what in a marriage in Greece? →
Divorce rate and trend in Greece →

• European e-Justice Portal: parental responsibility, child custody and contact rights in Greece