Shared custody law in Brazil (guarda compartilhada): what the rules say in 2026

Brazil has a shared-care rule, and it is not a rule about equal time. Where the parents do not agree on custody and both are fit to exercise poder familiar (parental authority), the Código Civil says guarda compartilhada será aplicada — shall be applied — and the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ) calls the regime not merely priority or preferential but obligatory. A state family-court judge applies it and sets the schedule.

What is shared is responsibility. The Code defines guarda compartilhada as the joint responsibility and exercise of the rights and duties of parents who do not live under the same roof; it asks for the time of contact to be divided de forma equilibrada — in a balanced way — and the STJ holds that the regime demands neither joint physical custody nor equal time together. Since October 2023 two exceptions are written into the statute: a parent who tells the judge they do not want custody, and elements showing the probability of a risk of domestic or family violence.

What Brazilian law actually says

Custody in Brazil is federal law. One Código Civil (Lei 10.406/2002) governs it across the country, and art. 1.583 opens flatly: custody “shall be unilateral or shared”. There is no state-by-state custody statute; only the court is a state court. Four provisions carry the whole model.

• Art. 1.583 § 1º — what is shared. Guarda compartilhada is the joint responsibility and exercise of the rights and duties of a father and mother who do not live under the same roof, concerning the poder familiar over their common children. It is a definition about responsibility. It describes no residence pattern.
• Art. 1.583 § 2º — the time. In the wording Lei 13.058/2014 introduced, the time of living together “must be divided in a balanced way with the mother and with the father, always having in view the factual conditions and the children's interests”. The word is equilibrada, balanced. The statute nowhere says equal.
• Art. 1.583 § 3º — where they live. The base de moradia is the city that best serves the children's interests. The statutory unit is a city, not a house.
• Art. 1.584 § 2º — no agreement. Where the parents do not agree and both are fit to exercise poder familiar, shared custody será aplicada. Since Lei 14.713/2023 the same paragraph carries two exceptions: a parent declaring to the judge that they do not want custody of the child or adolescent, or elements showing the probability of a risk of domestic or family violence.

Behind all of it sits poder familiar, which is not custody: both parents hold its full exercise whatever their marital situation, including consenting to a permanent move to another municipality. Separation, divorce and the dissolution of a união estável change nothing in the parent–child relationship except the right to have the children in one's company.

Sources: [1], [2], [3]

How a Brazilian court decides

The Code gives the judge no list of best-interest factors. It gives a rule, two exceptions and a fitness condition, then leaves the shape of the shared regime to the court.

1. Is there an agreement? Custody can be requested by consent. At the conciliation hearing — compulsory in family actions under the Code of Civil Procedure — the judge must explain to both parents what guarda compartilhada means, the similarity of the duties and rights it gives each, and the sanctions for breaching its clauses.
2. If not, are both parents fit? If both are fit to exercise poder familiar, shared custody shall be applied. The STJ holds that the only mechanisms the legislation provides for removing it are the suspension or the loss of poder familiar.
3. Does a parent decline, or is there a risk of violence? Those are the two written exceptions. The judge must ask the parties and the Ministério Público, before the mediation and conciliation hearing, whether there is a risk of domestic or family violence, allowing five days for evidence. The threshold is elements showing a probability of risk — not a conviction.
4. Conflict is not an exception. Requiring consensus, the STJ has said, “gives the problem a distorted focus”; the reasons for removing a parent's custody must be grave enough to compromise healthy contact with the children.
5. Then the schedule. The judge fixes the períodos de convivência and may rely on technical-professional or interdisciplinary guidance, which must aim at a balanced division of time. A principal residence may be fixed inside the shared regime, and parents living in different cities, states or even countries is no obstacle.

Where alienação parental is found, one of the measures open to the judge is to change custody to shared custody, or to reverse it.

Sources: [1], [2], [4], [5], [7], [8]

What this looks like in practice

The official numbers describe who holds custody, not how the days fall. IBGE records custody only for first-instance judicial divorces of couples with minor children, and in the 2024 figures, published on 10 December 2025, shared custody reached 44.6 % of those divorces — ahead of mother-only custody, at 42.6 %, for the first time in the series. In 2014, the year Lei 13.058 was passed, the same two shares were 7.5 % and 85.1 %. The “not declared” share, in the same denominator, has grown from 0.95 % in 2014 to 9.18 % in 2024.

Two things it does not say. It is not a share of all divorces: of the 428,301 divorces registered in 2024, judicial divorces were 81.8 %, and 45.8 % involved families with only minor children. And it says nothing about the calendar inside a shared arrangement: no official figure was found for how parenting time is actually divided, so this page gives none.

The gap matters, because guarda compartilhada is not guarda alternada — a double residence, in the STJ's description, in which each parent exercises custody individually and exclusively while the child is with them. The term appears nowhere in arts. 1.583–1.590. Alternating homes inside guarda compartilhada is a different thing, and is accepted.

What a family writes down, then, is a regime de convivência: the handover weekday, the holiday blocks, who has the children on each day. Support runs separately: each parent contributes in proportion to their resources, and no percentage appears in the Code.

• 50/50 custody schedules — what equal time costs in handovers.
• Alternating weeks — week on, week off, and the week-numbering trap at New Year.
• Custody schedule examples — unequal and balanced patterns side by side.
• Parenting plan template — the sections a written arrangement covers.
• Shared custody terms around the world — the local phrase, country by country.

Sources: [1], [7], [8], [9], [10]

The Portuguese terms you will meet

Term	What it means
guarda compartilhada	“Shared custody”: joint responsibility and exercise of the rights and duties of parents who do not live under the same roof. Responsibility, not a time split — and the everyday term too.
guarda unilateral	“Unilateral custody”: the Code's other option under art. 1.583, attributed to one parent.
guarda alternada	“Alternating custody” — a double residence in which each parent exercises custody exclusively in turn. Not in the Código Civil, and not a synonym for guarda compartilhada.
convivência	“Living together”: the parenting-time schedule. The Code says tempo de convívio and períodos de convivência; the child's right to convivência familiar comes from the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente.
poder familiar	Parental authority, not custody. Held in full by both parents whatever their marital situation, and it survives separation.
base de moradia	“Residence base” — the city treated as the children's base under shared custody. Not a “main home”.

Sources: [1], [3], [6], [7]

Recent changes

• 18 September 2026 Bill pending — committee stage

  PL 2126/2025 — custody barred where violence is proven

  This Câmara bill, presented in May 2025, would rewrite Código Civil arts. 1.584 and 1.589 to bar custody and impose a supervised-visitation regime where there is a proven history of domestic or family violence, including as regards grandparents. It would go further than the 2023 law, which bars only shared custody. At 18 September 2026 it was “Pronta para Pauta” in the CPASF committee with a substitutivo open for amendments: committee stage only, not adopted.

  Official source: Câmara dos Deputados open data, PL 2126/2025

• 2 October 2025 Bill pending — awaiting rapporteur

  PL 883/2023 — sole custody of a newborn while breastfeeding

  This bill runs in the opposite direction to the present rule: it would amend art. 1.584 to prioritise guarda unilateral of a newborn to the mother for as long as the breastfeeding period lasts. It reached the Senado as revising chamber in December 2023 and has awaited a rapporteur since 2 October 2025.

  Official source: Senado Federal open data, PL 883/2023

• 30 October 2023 In force

  Lei nº 14.713/2023 — domestic-violence bar

  In force on publication (DOU 31 October 2023), and the most recent statute to touch the custody articles. Art. 1.584 § 2º no longer applies shared custody where there are “elements showing the probability of a risk of domestic or family violence” — a bar needing no conviction. And a new art. 699-A of the Code of Civil Procedure obliges the judge, in every custody action, to ask the parties and the Ministério Público about that risk before the mediation and conciliation hearing, allowing five days for evidence. Nothing has amended Código Civil arts. 1.583–1.590 since.

  Official source: Lei nº 14.713, de 30 de outubro de 2023 (Planalto)

Frequently asked questions

Sources