Section 1567

Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section

1. Supreme Court Judgment No. 515/2560 (2017)

   Section 1567(1) gives the person exercising parental power the right to determine the child's place of residence. Where parents exercise their parental power over the child's person improperly, section 1582 paragraph one lets the court withdraw that power IN PART, and it may do so of its own motion even though no relative of the child and no public prosecutor has applied. The court may then appoint someone else as guardian limited to the same matter under section 1585 paragraph one. The power to withdraw comes from section 1582, not from section 1567, and a withdrawal may be confined to the residence-determination right rather than removing parental power as a whole.

   The parents sued the defendants for the return of their minor child. The evidence was that the parents had not cared for or visited the child or contributed to her maintenance, so that although she knew who they were she felt no close or warm relationship with them and was frightened at the prospect of living with them, and that the second plaintiff had seized the child by force, leaving her shocked, frightened, stressed and anxious, with disturbed behaviour that risked developing into psychiatric illness. The Supreme Court held that this was an improper exercise of parental power over the child's person, that under section 1582 paragraph one it could withdraw part of the parental power of its own motion even though no relative or public prosecutor had applied, and that the child's welfare required it. It withdrew the parents' power only so far as it concerned determining the child's place of residence under section 1567(1), and appointed the two defendants as guardians in that respect alone under section 1585 paragraph one.

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