The Commission is clearly in favor of the principle of joint parental responsibility between mother and father being enshrined in the Civil Code, regardless of their marital status.
The commission adopted the draft amendment to the Civil Code (ZGB; 11.070 ) in the overall vote with 11 votes to 0 and 8 abstentions. It agrees with the Federal Council's version on most issues. She debated in detail the relationship between parental custody and the right to determine one's place of residence (Article 301a). The Commission has taken the view that this right is necessarily part of parental responsibility. If the consent of both parents is no longer necessary for a change in place of residence, which has a significant impact on the exercise of parental responsibility, the aim of the new regulation would fundamentally be called into question.
The majority of the Commission requests deviations from the draft in particular on the following points:
– With 13 votes to 2 and 3 abstentions, in the case of unmarried parents who do not live in the same household, it requires a maintenance agreement approved by the child and adult protection authority as an additional requirement for the allocation of joint parental custody (Art. 298a).
- By 15 votes to 6, the Commission requests - as a result of the repeal of Article 309 of the Civil Code - to expressly mention in Article 308 the possibility of granting the guardian the power to represent the child in establishing the child's relationship with the father.
– In the transitional provisions, the Federal Council proposed that a regulation of parental custody that was made in the context of a divorce can only be returned to if the divorce was less than five years ago at the time the new law came into force. With 13 votes to 7 and 2 abstentions, the Commission speaks out against this restriction (Article 12, paragraph 5, final title).
Various minorities are requesting further changes.