Enforcement of parental obligations: legal and sociological aspects of contact and maintenance arrangements

Abstract

The Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania provides that the family is under the protection and care of the state. Perception of the family as of a constitutional value, implies, among other things, the enforcement of rights and obligations of individual family members. These include the right of children to adequate maintenance and the right of parents to parental authority with regard to their children (e.g., the right to contact their children and to participate in their upbringing). Despite the existing regulation, children’s rights to maintenance and to participation of both parents in their upbringing and communication with them are often not properly implemented after the dissolution of marriage or separation of their parents. Analysis of the case law (both national and that of the ECHR) leads to a conclusion that quite often one of the parents (or sometimes both of them) abuses the parental authority and fails to ensure the child’s right to maintain personal contacts with the second parent, thus not only breaching the child’s rights but also setting limitations to the second parent’s involvement in tackling various issues related to the child’s interests. A proper implementation of maintenance obligations depends on both subjective and objective circumstances, e.g., material wealth of the parents (income and property), the number of dependents, etc. Timely fulfilment of the parental obligations becomes even more complicated when the parents reside in two different states. To resolve the disputes with a cross-border element, the states resort to the specialised legal instruments, such as Council Regulations, The Hague Conventions, etc. This paper is based on the findings of a representative survey of fathers living separately from their children after dissolution of their partnership with children’s mothers, carried out in Lithuania. It analyses how these fathers estimate the fairness of contact and maintenance arrangements set by the court, as well as their subjective explanations of the reasons for the court decisions deemed by them as unfair. .