Co-parenting and shared custody in Catalonia

The paper addresses the issue of legal custody of minor children after divorce in a context of increasing diversity of parental practices. We present a socio-legal framework that currently exists in Spain and Catalonia around the legal entity and practice of shared custody. Judiciary data obtained from INE on "Decrees of annulments, separations and divorces" are analyzed for Catalonia and other Spanish regions (2007-2012). The results highlight the uniqueness of Catalonia in the context of the Spanish State with the highest levels of divorce, fewer disputed judgements and higher rates of shared custody. We conclude that the sharp increase in shared custody could be due to the adaptation of the judicial practices to new models of co-parenting before divorce. This raises the need for qualitative research to study the real impact of shared custody on the daily lives of children and their parents, as we construe that shared custody agreements contain diverse and complex situations that are created after divorce.