You have the right to maintain contact and a relationship with both of your parents, even if you don’t live with them. This right is protected by a human right called the right to a family life.
Right to maintain contact
The fact that you are able to spend time together with your parents and enjoy each other’s company is essential for your family life. Therefore, you should be able to meet your parents even if you don’t live together.
There may be several reasons why you may be separated from one or both of your parents. For example, one of your parents may choose to live somewhere else, he/she may have been imprisoned, or a state institution may have decided that living with your parents is currently not safe for you. Even in these situations, you have the right to maintain a relationship with both of your parents and the people who are caring for you. Your foster family, legal guardian or childcare institution should help you to contact or meet your parents. However, there may be situations where such contact or meetings may be denied if they are not in your best interests.
example It may not be in your best interests to maintain regular direct contact with a parent who has previously been violent towards you.
Parental access rights
Your parents’ right to maintain contact with you and to meet you is usually referred to as their access rights. If you are living together with only one of your parents, both parents may mutually agree on how the other parent can exercise his/her access rights. This means that they can agree on how often, for how long, or where your other parent can see you.
If your parents can’t agree on this, it can be determined by a court in consultation with the center for social work. If you have been separated from your family (you are not living with your family), the court will decide on how your parents can gain access to you.
Read more about parental access rights.
Restrictions
There may be situations where your right to contact your parents may be restricted. Usually this is not because you are not allowed to see your parents, but rather because it would be better for you if your parents did not meet you. This happens most often if contact with your parents could somehow threaten your interests, for example, endanger your life or health or harm your development.
example If either or both of your parents have previously been violent towards you or left you home alone without any supervision and endangered your safety in that way, they may not be allowed to see you for a certain time period.
The decision to restrict a parent’s right to access you temporarily or deny it permanently can be taken by a court if it is only possible to sufficiently protect your interests this way.
Read more about restrictions of parental access rights.
Aspects for evaluation
If a court took a decision to restrict meetings and contact between you and your parents, they have to take several important aspects into account. The most important one is your best interests. Any decision that restricts your parents’ opportunity to meet you must also be lawful, otherwise it will violate the right to a family life for you and your parents.
Read more about the aspects that are important and should be evaluated when restricting parental access rights.