Child custody in Sweden

Both parents have joint custody automatically if they are married when the child is born. Parents who marry later gain joint custody through the marriage.

The mother has custody at birth. The father can get joint custody by registering it, which the official fact sheet says is easy to do, or by going to court to seek joint or sole custody.

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.

Joint custody continues after a divorce without a court decision, and changing it requires applying to end joint custody. The child's residence is not set by default: a court decides whether the child lives with one parent or alternately with both.

As the child grows, the custodian must take more account of the child's views and wishes. The official fact sheet gives no age.

The official fact sheet does not cover moving. With joint custody, moving the child abroad generally needs both parents' consent.

Sweden 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.

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

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