Family law

Those of our lawyers who practice family law are members of the Family Lawyers Union. It associates lawyers and other experts who promote out-of-court settlements of family disputes and training and education of family law professionals and the general public alike, free exchange of information about the practical experience and recent developments in family law with other lawyers, legal scholars, family therapists, public prosecutors, courts and child protection authorities. 

Rödl & Partner lawyers attend professional symposia, conferences and workshops. They closely monitor current case law and participate in training courses and seminars hosted by leading family law scholars and practitioners, such as the judges of the Supreme and Constitutional Courts. 

Our legal services include:

We draft all documents needed in court and out-of-court proceedings. We represent our clients before courts, child protection authorities, the Office of International Legal Protection of Children, and during mediation. 

We help our clients understand how to resolve their problems. We explain the complexities of the process they will have to undergo, and offer them a variety of alternative solutions. In addition to dealing with the legal aspects of family law, we also assist as mediators. We cooperate with several family therapy organizations, including supervised visitation program centers. We also cooperate with organizations that help the victims of domestic violence.

One of the characteristic features of family law as a practice area is that it contends with the emotional and even intimate situations and circumstances of the parties involved, whether with respect to their interpersonal relationships or their property. Our lawyers exhibit the requisite level of compassion and empathy; they are attentive listeners, who can offer their clients the psychological assistance they need. To this end, we have developed a network of time-tested collaborators in psychotherapy, psychology and psychiatry, who can provide our clients with much-needed help and support.

 

Thanks to our cooperation with other experts under our comprehensive service model, we are able to analyze our clients’ needs and issues and help them make the best decision. We are efficient, sensitive and tactful. Our many years of experience allow us to help our clients gain a view of the potential consequences of their actions, especially in matters such as the custody of underage children. A bad decision at the start of the long-term, dynamic process may have irreversible consequences.

We always stand at our client’s side through thick and thin and let them contact us whenever they need to. As family lawyers, we always stay close to our clients. As a result, our clients frequently keep in touch with us even after our engagement has ended and they keep us informed about the quality and long-term benefits of our services, for which we are very grateful.  

We defended one of the first international child abductions in the Czech Republic, when we represented the mother of an infant who had been removed from the Czech Republic to the USA. Defending the rights of the mother, or rather the rights of the child, who was still being exclusively breastfed when the US courts decided to repatriate the child without its mother to the United States, was made particularly difficult by the absence of any previous case law or even relevant legal scholarship in our jurisdiction.  In a lawsuit that spanned five different courts, including the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic, we managed to protect the child from the injunction to return to the United States where it had no social bonds. The Czech Supreme Court respected our legal arguments and reversed the judgments of the lower-tier courts. In subsequent proceedings, the court of appeal dismissed the action for the return of the child filed by the child’s father. As the child flourished and the father’s lackluster interest waned, time showed that the last instance court’s decision was correct and in the best interest of the child. 

We also brought to a successful resolution another complicated international case, in which the child was born in Portugal, the father was an Australian citizen and the mother a Czech citizen. The trial court quite unreasonably decided to repatriate the child from the Czech Republic to Portugal where neither of its parents lived and where it had no social bonds. We won the case on appeal and managed to keep the child resident in the Czech Republic. 

We also managed to arrange foster care for a child who was abandoned by its alcoholic mother. We handle cases involving the parenthood of registered same-sex couples and cases involving surrogate mothers.