Garde partagée des enfants après le divorce. Analyse des décisions judiciaires de la ville de Barcelone en 2014

The objective of this article is to study the legal agreements on the residential arrangements of the children after a separation of the parents according to the time shared with each of them, to assess the evolution of co-parenting, including the Catalan Law of 2010. We analyze the decisions of the family courts of the city of Barcelona in 2014. We start by estimating the prevalence of the different types of custody, focusing in particular on the variables associated with joint residence, on a set of 2,278 court decisions. Then, on a smaller sample (830 decisions), we go into more detail by focusing on the temporal framework of the residential models, expressed in number of nights per year with each parent, and on the financing of expenditure relating to children. We present the results by comparing shared custody with sole custody of the mother, taking into account the procedure (by consensus or litigation). The conclusion is the coexistence of three situations: 1) An emerging paradigm: Shared custody by consensus equitably between parents in terms of time and financial responsibilities. 2) The previous paradigm: sole custody of the mother in the litigation process which equates the allocation of custody with the collection of alimony and 3) A situation of transition between the old paradigm and the emerging paradigm in the cases of sole custody of a mother by consensus with great inequalities between maternity and paternity. This is the first time that a study of this scope has been carried out in Spain, both by its scope (all the decisions of a large city over one year), by the thematic areas addressed, and by taking into account the breakdown of non-marital unions.