What is custody?
Find more information about what custody is.
Any person in Denmark who is under the age of 18 is subject to parental responsibility.
The person or persons who have custody must take care of the child and can decide on the child's personal circumstances based on the child's interests and needs.
The child has the right to care and security. The child must be treated with respect for his or her person and must not be subjected to corporal punishment or other offensive treatment.
The person or persons with custody must protect the child from threats of any kind and ensure that all the child's needs are met. If you have custody, you must provide the child's food, clothing, housing and the like. As custodial parents, you also have the right to decide what the child should and should not do. You can decide what the child should be called, where it will live, where it will go to school, what religious upbringing the child will have, whether the child will have a passport and everything else that is important to the child.
Parental responsibility is not the same as parenthood.
You do not have a duty to support when you have custody. The legal parents have a duty to provide for the child. Nor does parental responsibility give the right to access. The child's right to access is independent of who has custody.
The rules on parental responsibility are set out in the Parental Responsibility Act.