Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court has clarified the distinction between shared custody and extended visiting rights: each parent should normally provide more than 30% of a child’s regular care. A recent ruling explains how that share should be calculated—and why the distinction matters financially.
Under sole custody, the parent with whom the child lives generally contributes through everyday care, while the other provides financial support. Under shared custody, both contribute financially, according to their care responsibilities and ability to pay. Parents with equal financial capacity who provide equal care generally split the child’s costs equally. If their financial capacity is equal but their care contributions differ, the parent providing less care generally pays more.
The case concerned a father whose son moved to Austria with his mother after the couple separated. The father cared for the boy on alternate weekends and during nine weeks of school holidays each year. He argued that this amounted to roughly 36% of the year and should count as shared custody. On that basis, he sought a reduction in child maintenance: he was required to meet the child’s assessed financial needs in full.
The cantonal court in Schwyz rejected his claim. The Federal Supreme Court upheld that decision, finding that his arrangements fell well short of shared custody. His maintenance obligation remained in place, and he was ordered to pay court costs and contribute towards the mother’s legal expenses.
Counting care
The court’s framework divides a fortnight into 42 units. Each day has three: morning, afternoon and night. Overnight care counts because parental responsibility does not end when a child falls asleep.
For an arrangement to count as shared custody, each parent should normally provide at least 13 of those 42 units—just over 30% of regular care.
The father’s alternate weekends accounted for six units, well below the threshold. To reach 13, he would have needed to provide care equivalent to both full weekends in a fortnight, plus another half-day or night during the week.
Holidays are different
The father’s calculation depended on including school holidays. The court generally excludes holiday care from this calculation, giving greater weight to the child’s everyday routine.
Its reasoning rests on the demands of ordinary parenting. A parent caring for a child during holidays, it said, does not face the same mental load as the parent responsible for daily life. Nine weeks of holiday care therefore did not turn the father’s visiting arrangements into shared custody.
Shared care, unequal bills
Recognition of a shared-custody arrangement does not automatically reduce maintenance payments. The calculation depends on how care is divided, each parent’s financial capacity and which expenses each pays directly. Even with equal care, the better-off parent may still have to make maintenance payments to the other.
Nor does falling below the threshold invariably mean that one parent must meet the child’s assessed financial needs in full. The court upheld that outcome in this case and left avoiding an abrupt change in financial obligations around the threshold unresolved.
The ruling provides clearer guidance for cantons that have taken different approaches. It may also sharpen the debate over what counts as care. Nights count towards the threshold; holidays generally do not. That distinction reflects the court’s emphasis on everyday responsibility, but it is unlikely to reslove all child financial and custody disagreements between separated parents.
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