Abstract:Intensive parenting responsibilities, unequal gender division of labor, and high divorce rates have become major factors influencing contemporary parental fulfillment. The dissolution of marriage does not alter the inherent parent-child relationship. Divorced parents should focus on a parenting partnership to jointly fulfill their legal responsibilities for supporting, educating, and protecting their minor children. The state should ensure and assist divorced parents in the joint fulfillment of these responsibilities. Currently, the Chinese Civil Code and related judicial interpretations primarily address specific issues such as direct custody, child support, and visitation arrangements. This has resulted in a zero-sum dynamic: the “prevailing party” co-resides with the child and provides daily care, while the “losing party” is relegated to financial obligations and limited visitation rights. Within this framework, significant obstacles impede both child support compliance and cooperation in visitation rights. To transform this paradigm, it is imperative to (i) strengthen baseline regulatory requirements for parental obligations, and (ii) implement proactive measures supporting collaborative responsibility fulfillment. At the normative level, Article 16 of Judicial Interpretation II on the Book of Marriage and Family of the Civil Code and Article 52 of Judicial Interpretation I on the Book of Marriage and Family of the Civil Code govern responsibility allocation. Article 1085 of the Civil Code must be adhered to in the application of the above provisions: To be valid, any agreement assigning full custody and financial responsibility to one parent must require the child’s informed consent and judicial review, confirming the child’s well-being. The determination of the amounts of child support should, proceeding from the principle of the best interests of the minor child, reflect the divorced parents’ obligation to maintain the child’s standard of living commensurate with that prior to the dissolution of the marriage or with the parents’ current standard of living. A possible breakthrough in addressing the persistent issue of default in child support payments is leveraging big data to establish a unified deduction and transfer mechanism, whereby child support is mandatorily deducted from the obligor’s income and transferred to the child(ren) upon the obligor’s failure to fulfill the payment obligation voluntarily. Regarding visitation rights, beyond enhanced intervention and penalties, the focus should shift to promoting collaborative education and protection, including (i) introducing co-parenting agreements to ensure comprehensive accountability, (ii) guaranteeing informed participation to facilitate joint decision-making, (iii) exploring rotating residential custody to incentivize equal engagement, and (iv) strengthening child participation in calibrating educational safeguards, so as to establish a sound co-parenting partnership.

 

Author:Deng Li, associate research fellow, CASS Institute of Law;

Source: 5 (2025) Global Law Review.