Contact with child’s legal father extended

Case no. BS-59797/2025-HJR

Judgment delivered on 24 March 2026

F
vs. 
M

In the summer of 2019, M gave birth to child B. On the basis of a declaration of joint care and responsibility on paternity, M’s then partner, F, was registered as the child’s father. In December 2019, M and F separated, and B subsequently had contact with F to varying degrees. In 2022, F applied for an extension of his contact with B.

In the spring of 2022, M and A had a private DNA test carried out, which showed that A was B’s biological father with a probability of more than 99.99%. M and A then requested that the paternity case be reopened, claiming that A should be registered as B’s father. The Supreme Court rejected this by order of 8 October 2024 (UfR 2025.28). F is thus still B’s legal father.
By agreement with A, B had had contact with A since the spring of 2022. While the present case was pending, A applied to the Agency of Family Law to establish contact arrangements between him and B. The Agency of Family Law refused to consider the application for contact, but in July 2025, the Family Court remitted the case for reconsideration by the Agency, where the application is still pending. 

In the present case, the Family Court extended the contact between B and F, while the High Court established provisional limited contact, referring, among other things, to A’s request for contact with B. 

The case before the Supreme Court concerned the extent of B’s contact with F.

The Supreme Court stated that an overall assessment must be made of what is in the best interests of the child when deciding on the extent of a child’s contact with a legal parent in a case where the child has both a legal parent and a biological parent that the child neither lives nor has contact with. The law does not treat other relatives, including a biological father who is not the legal father, as equivalent to legal parents with regard to the extent of contact. Consequently, the fact that there is also, or will also be, contact with a biological parent will normally only result in contact with the legal parent being restricted to a very limited extent compared to what the contact would otherwise have been.

Based on the information in the case, the Supreme Court maintained the contact arrangements between B and F in accordance with the Family Court’s judgment, with the necessary adjustments.