Custody Award Following the Separation of Same-Sex Marriages: The Great Unknown

Abstract

The granting of custody after the separation of couples is an increasingly common field of study. The literature shows that the interest in this topic has focused mainly on the separation of heterosexual couples. This article seeks to show how the granting of custody is distributed among the different models in the case of Spain, and the impact of specific variables on the granting of custody after the breakdown of same-sex marriages. A quantitative methodology was applied with multivariate descriptive analysis (through the elaboration of dependency analysis), using the Statistics of Nullities, Separations and Divorces (ENSD) of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The main conclusion was that the joint custody model is more present than the sole custody in the case of same-sex couples, while the number of minors and dependent children of legal age are the variables that determine the custody model granted.