Effects of the Joint Custody Law in Italy

• Author: Daniela Vuri,Guido de Blasio
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12225

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 16, Issue 3, 479–514, September 2019

Effects of the Joint Custody Law in Italy

Guido de Blasio and Daniela Vuri*

We study the effect of a 2006 reform to Italian family law that made joint custody the

default for separating couples. The reform boosted joint legal custody by about 75 percent-

age points. Our research design uses difference-in-differences to estimate reform effects

on the likelihood of a contested settlement, length of trial, and transfers between separat-

ing parents. The analysis is based on Italian individual-level administrative data, which

cover the entire population. The joint custody default appears to have increased dispute

rates and length of trial markedly, without affecting transfers. There is no evidence that

mothers buy custody rights back through reduced support. Our findings are consistent

with the excessive discretion given to judges on some aspects of law implementation,

which resulted in a partial application of the reform.

I. Introduction

Joint custody was first introduced in the United States in Indiana in 1973 and since then

it has been extended to most U.S. states (Brinig & Buckley 1998). In Europe, joint cus-

tody was first introduced in Sweden in 1976 (Jantera-Jareborg 2003), and has since spread

across the continent.

1

Rather than awarding sole custody to one parent (traditionally the

mother) and limited visiting rights to the other (the father), joint custody is intended to

preserve the parental role and status of both parents after separation, enabling continued

involvement and ensuring the best interest of the child. Under joint custody, the child is

expected to spend time with each parent (joint physical custody) and parents need to

*Address correspondence to Daniela Vuri, Department of Economics and Finance, University of Rome “Tor

Vergata,” via Columbia 2, Rome, Italy; email: daniela.vuri@uniroma2.it. De Blasio is with the Bank of Italy.; Vuri is

at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, CEIS, CESifo, and IZA.

The authors thank Josh Angrist, Andrea Filippone, Andrea Ichino, Federico Perali, the editor, and two anony-

mous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. The views and the opinions expressed in this article are

those of the authors and do not necessarily correspond to those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.

The data were obtained from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) under the research protocol

signed by ISTAT and the Department of Economics and Finance of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” for the

project “The Consequences of Joint Custody on Separating and Divorcing Couples.” The authors are deeply grate-

ful to Giancarlo Gualtieri from ISTAT for his help with the data.

1

It was introduced in Norway in 1981 (Sverdrup & Lodrup 2003), in the United Kingdom and Wales in 1991

(Office for National Statistics 2001), in France in 1993 (and subsequently modified in 2002) (Stati stisches

Bundesamt 2003), in Germany in 1997 (Dethloff & Martiny 2003), in the Netherlands in 1998 and subsequently

modified in 2009 (Tromp 2013), in Austria in 2001 (Roth 2003), in Belgium in 1995 (for joint legal custody) and

in 2006 (for joint physical custody) (Soderman et at. 2013), and in Spain in 2005 (Piconto Novales 2012).

479

agree on important decisions regarding the children (joint legal custody). The financial

arrangements of parents also change since they may be directly called to contribute child

expenses.

After a long period in which joint custody was uncommon, a 2006 reform made

joint custody the default in Italian family law, conforming to the laws introduced in other

European countries. Prior to 2006, Italy, like other European countries, assigned custody

to the mother (in the overwhelming majority of the cases), reflecting court discretion.

The reform changed this rule by introducing a “presumption” of joint parenting. By “pre-

sumption” is meant the court’s default decision, which can be altered before the case is

settled only by motivated arguments. The law states that it is a right of the child to have a

balanced and lasting relationship with both parents. At the same time, the reform inno-

vated on a number of postseparation financial provisions (related to child support and

the designation of the family home) with the aim of achieving the objective set forth by

the law, that is, granting the child a sound relationship with both parents.

The main contribution of this study is to analyze the effects of joint custody at the

time of separation.

2

The allocation of custody is a crucial aspect of any separation process

since it determines the postdivorce living arrangements and potentially has long-lasting

consequences on parents’ and children’s well-being. The negotiation at separation typi-

cally involves the division of the whole marital property, which includes the allocation of

custody and family home, the division of financial and liquid assets, alimony awards and

child support payments.

The vast majority of the literature on child custody has attempted to provide empiri-

cal evidence of the effects of joint custody reform on individual behavior and children’s

well-being, in particular on the effect of custody law on divorce, marriage, fertility, and

employment decisions. However, little empirical attention has been given to legal details at

separation (with the exception represented by Halla and Ho

¨lzl [2007] and Allen and Brinig

[2011]) and the effects these might have on custody outcomes. The main reason is that the

relevant data are available in court records and difficult to obtain (Allen & Brinig 2011).

This article aims to fill this gap by analyzing the effect of joint parenting laws on cus-

tody, support, and separation processes in Italy. We look at the separation settlements as

ratified in courts. These settlements play a crucial role for longer-term post-separation out-

comes, as they regulate rights and duties of both parents for a lengthy period. Italy repre-

sents an interesting case study because it is one of the few countries where collection of

data on post-separation living and financial agreements is mandatory for all separating cou-

ples. Moreover, it extends the knowledge of specific aspects of joint custody reform in a

country that is very different from the United Stateswhere most of the literature that exam-

ines the effect of joint custody on family behavior is concentrated (Halla 2015).

We use a difference-in-differences (DID) empirical strategy to gauge the effect of

the 2006 Italian custody reform on dispute rates, length of trial, and financial transfers

between mothers and fathers, all aspects that are rarely investigated in the literature to

2

As explained in detail in Section IV, we focus on separation because in Italy it represents the moment when the

relevant decisions on family issues are taken.

480 de Blasio and Vuri

date (a notable exception is Allen and Brinig [2011], who look at the effect of the 1997

change to custody provisions in the State of Oregon). In particular, we exploit the fact

that only women with dependent children are potentially affected by the reform (we also

consider other outcomes, e.g., child support, for which no sensible control group is avail-

able; in these cases we employ a before/after strategy like in Allen and Brinig [2011]).

Data are collected by the offices that support the work of the judges (Cancellerie) for the

entire population of separating couples from 2000 to 2010. The data allow us to study a

number of post-separation financial arrangements, such as the assignment of the family

home and support.

Unfortunately, the amount of time each parent is allowed to spend with the chil-

dren, an important part of the judgment, is not collected in our data. Nonetheless, as the

reform prescribes that custodial length mirrors child support, we may infer something

about visitation durations by looking at financial outcomes. In addition to the main out-

comes that the reform aimed to change, we consider other possible outcomes, such as ali-

monies, which are not directly affected by the reform but are nevertheless part of the

judge’s decision. We also analyze the extent to which dispute rates and judicial ineffi-

ciency (as measured by the time elapsed between the application for separation and the

final decision of the judge) have been impacted by the introduction of joint custody.

Our findings show that the reform has boosted joint “legal” custody assignments, dis-

pute rates, and judicial inefficiency markedly, without affecting transfers. There is no evi-

dence that mothers buy custody rights back through reduced support. Moreover, we

cannot relate the behavior of the judiciary in terms of the application of the joint custody

law to its overall inefficiency, as extensively documented in other studies (Bianco et al.

2007). A possible explanation of our results can be found in the considerable discretion

that judges have in the application of family law in Italy as a consequence of the principle

of the “best interest of the child,” which also inspires many national regulations. The

reform was clear concerning the formal (legal) assignment of joint custody but it was less

clear on other aspects, such as the amount of time each parent spends with the child and

the transfer involved in post-dissolution arrangements. As for these aspects, the law

established the new principles while leaving plenty of implementation power to the judges.

Our results suggest that discretion might have been usedto moderate the new principles.

The article is structured as follows. Section II discusses the related literature and

the theoretical framework, while Section III describes the reform. Section IV illustrates

the data and the variables used throughout the article, as well as the post-separation out-

comes under study and the sample selection. Section V outlines the identification strat-

egy. The results are presented in Section VI, which also discusses the shortcomings of the

data, potential threats to our identification strategy, and alternative interpretations of our

results. Section VII concludes.

II. Theoretical Framework and Related Literature

How are separation settlements affected by the introduction of joint custody as a default

arrangement for separating couples?

Effects of the Joint Custody Law in Italy 481