The parent’s costs of visitation of a child should be evenly distributed

The fact that a parent who has been granted the custody of a child moves away to a greater distance from the original place of residence must be taken into account by general courts in their decisions regulating the contact with the child or the duty to support and maintain. This conclusion arises from decision passed by the Supreme Court under case no. ÚS 2996/17. 

In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the costs associated with a parent’s contact with the child cannot be borne by just one of the parents. If one parent must travel a greater distance to visit the child, it is fair that the negatives associated therewith would be borne equally by both parents. Therefore, the Supreme Court believes that if a mother moves with her child from Prague to Ostrava, general courts should rule for example that the mother would be obliged to give the child to the father in Prague or in some other place agreed upon by the parents. The father would then return the child to the mother at her new residence in Ostrava. In this way, both parents would spend approximately the same money, energy and time for contact with their child.