The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a Russian court’s decision to terminate a non-biological father’s parental rights was in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The divorced parents of the 8-year-old child had been sharing residence rights until her father discovered bruises on her body and, suspecting sexual and physical abuse by her mother’s new partner, refused to return the child. He made complaints both to the police and the District Court and both parents applied for residence orders. The child’s mother was granted residence over the child. Upon finding a lack of evidence of mistreatment or sexual abuse, the criminal proceedings were discontinued. Subsequently, the child’s mother lodged an application contesting the father’s paternity and a DNA test established that he was not in fact the child’s biological father. The District Court then terminated his paternity rights as well as ordering that his name be deleted from the child’s birth certificate and that her family name and patronymic be changed. Furthermore, the court found that he had no standing under domestic law to lodge civil actions concerning parental authority over the child. The Supreme Court upheld this decision on appeal. The father then applied to the European Court claiming a breach of his Article 8 rights.
Firstly, the Court determined that the relationship between father and daughter here amounted to ‘family life’ within the meaning of Article 8.1. It reiterated that the existence or non-existence of ‘family life’ is essentially a question of fact depending on the presence in practice of close personal ties. The fact that the father had raised and cared for his daughter for more than five years, combined with the close emotional bond between them, led the Court to deduce a ‘family life’ relationship.
Secondly, the Court ruled that the Russian courts had breached their positive obligations under Article 8. It held that the complete and automatic exclusion of the father from the child’s life after the termination of his paternity amounted to a failure to respect the applicant’s family life.
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