친권정지와 면접교섭권

Abstract

Visitation rights allow a parent who has but does not personally raise an underage child to visit and meet him or her. Visitation rights concern both the parents and their children, and, when the interest of the parents conflict with welfare of the children, the latter takes priority according to the general principles of Parent and Children Act. In South Korea, visitation rights have been mainly discussed with respect to parents of an underage child who are divorcing, and can be limited or excluded if it is necessary for welfare of the child. An example of such exception is when parental right is lost due to child abuse. Then, what about in the case of parental right suspension? If the parental right is suspended due to child abuse, it may seem reasonable to automatically restrict visitation rights. However, parental right suspension is only temporary and parental right is recovered on the condition of reunion of the parent and child. Therefore, it is not justified to associate parental right suspension with restriction of visitation rights. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child also states that regular exchange with the parents is a human right of a child. In that respect, this study looked into theories in Japan and system in Germany that are related to visitation rights during parental right suspension from the viewpoint of the maximum interest of the child. The result suggests that visitation rights must be considered independent from parental right, and, therefore, it is not reasonable to have visitation rights, which is a human right of the child, depend on existence of parental right.