Family Law Issues During COVID 19: Co-Parenting and Access to Children

The COVID-19 crisis has a major impact on the life of people around the world. People, their relations, their jobs and all other aspects of life have experienced change during COVID pandemic. The pandemic situation also affects the exis-ting legal agreements such as co-parent-ing. Many countries issued stay-at-home orders which limited contact between people and their family and friends. 
This order has a great impact on families who follow court orders on co-parenting and access to the children. The COVID restrictions have created confusion and distress for them about their rights and responsibilities. The study of legal decisions in Iran and also some countries such as Australia, Canada, and Ireland show that the current COVID restrictions cannot be used as an excuse to breach the legal agreement. The existing court orders remain in place and must be respected as much as possible. However, parents may modify the existing court orders according to the situation and taking into account the best interests of the child while there is a “reasonable excuse”. Some legal princ-iples such as the principle of “no harm and no loss” and the principle of “avoiding hardship” and the article 40 of Iranian Constitution which explains that the exercise of any one’s right cannot be in a manner that harms others. Therefore, if the decision to any change in access or custo-dy is made based on preventing any kind of loss or harm to children which is reasonably probable, there is no civil liability nor criminal one for the breach of legal agreement. This article examines some family law issues which have been litigated  regularly during COVID pande-mic such as the custody and access during COVID, lock-down and quarantine and access to the courts, and different ways to inform people about their legal rights and responsibilities and any modification to them during COVID-19.