Child custody in South Africa

Both parents have full parental responsibilities and rights, and keep them after divorce.

The mother has them automatically. The father has them if he was married to the mother, or if he lived with her in a permanent life partnership when the child was born, or if he acknowledges paternity and contributes to the child's upbringing and maintenance for a reasonable period.

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.

Parents are encouraged to agree a parenting plan, and the court can also decide. The child's best interests are the paramount consideration, and both parents' responsibilities continue after divorce unless a court limits them.

The child must be given an opportunity to take part in decisions that affect them, appropriate to their age, maturity and stage of development.

A parent with parental responsibilities needs the other's consent, or a court's, to move the child abroad.

South Africa 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.

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

• Department of Justice, South Africa