Child custody in Malta

The birth parents (or the adoptive parents, once the adoption is final) hold parental responsibility. The official fact sheet gives no separate rule for married parents.

The mother holds parental responsibility. The father gets it only if he registers the birth jointly with the mother.

The unmarried father, in one line: The mother has it; the father needs a step: a joint declaration, registration, agreement, or living with the mother at the birth.

Arrangements are set by a court decision, mediation, or an enforceable document signed before a notary. The court rarely gives full care and custody to one parent and decides case by case. With joint custody the parents make the major decisions together (residence, education, health), and acts of extraordinary administration need both parents' consent.

Court-appointed experts consult the child when they prepare reports. The official fact sheet gives no age threshold.

Where one parent has sole custody, taking the child to a third country needs the other parent's consent if it directly affects that parent's access. In urgent cases the court can issue an interim order preventing departure.

Malta 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.

Malta belongs to the Mixed: civil and common law family. Family law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

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

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