INTRODUCTION

Denmark has a child population of 1,165,500, amounting to 20% of the total population. Most Danish children, 73%, live with both parents, 16% live with their mother, 6% live with their mother and her partner, and 4% live with their father. One per cent of children do not live with either of their parents. The number of children who live with both their parents decreases as children grow older. Amongst one-year-olds, 89% live with both parents, whereas this applies to only 57% of 17-year-olds.

Children's participation rights are recognised in Danish law; however, there is no constitutional or overarching regulation of these rights. The right to participation is regulated in a piecemeal way in various statutes, for example in the Parental Responsibility Act and the Social Services Act. Generally, it is presumed in literature and the travaux préparatoires that in procedures that are relevant to the child, the child has the right to participate through a child hearing (bornesamtale), although the legal regulation does not always stipulate this. It may be stated more indirectly, as is the case for the Parental Responsibility Act, which mentions ‘involvement’ to allow the child's perspective and views to be expressed, for instance, but not only, through a hearing.

The participation rights of children have been strengthened in legislative reforms over the past decades. Most notably, the general age limit of 12 years for hearing children in family law procedures was abandoned in 2007 in favour of an individual assessment of the child's maturity by the relevant authority. Further, the mode of hearing was amended in 2012 to allow only child professionals such as psychologists to hear children, so that judges and other lawyers cannot hear children without the presence of a child professional, who normally conducts the hearing. Although the participation rights have been strengthened, it remains the general more formal legal position that the child who is a party to the case is represented by the holder(s) of parental authority, most often the child's parents, and only exceptionally has separate legal representation. Thus, the development is characterised not by independent rights of the child, but rather by parallel rights of the parents and the child.