Case Study: no. 25/2023 decision of the Court of First of Kavala: Father getting sole custody of three children and dissolution of marriage due to the mother’s abusive behavior (domestic violence) against the children.

LEGAL INSIGHT

January 2023

Very often, when the parents are litigating for custody, the court must issue its decision on the basis of two opposite scenarios: the claim of domestic violence on the one side and the claim of parental alienation on the other side. In other words, the one parent is claiming that the other parent is abusing the child and the later claims that the allegations are taking place to exclude him from the child’s life. This work becomes even harder, when the custody battle is still at the stage of temporary measures and the court cannot have total proof of each claim. This article comments on the case that our firm handled and led to the issuance of the no. 25/2024 decision of the Court of First Instance of Kavala, which, after a court drama of temporary measures, which ended in ruling that the three children should live apart from one another, decided on the one hand their reunion and on the other hand the exclusion of their mother from custody. The court ruled that the mother had been systematically violent to the children and that no claim of parental alienation could justify her behavior, and thus granted the sole custody of their three children to the father.