Swedish family policy and law are based on assumptions of gender equality, shared parenting, and amicable separation. However, these assumptions do not always correspond with the heterogeneous lived realities of separated parents in Sweden. This misalignment raises questions about the capacity of the current legal and policy framework to adequately support all families and to prevent social and economic disadvantage among those who do not conform to these ideals. This thesis addresses these misalignments by examining how the Swedish legal system responds to parents who bring conflicts over child custody and child maintenance to court. The aim is to integrate insights from sociology and law to provide an overview of the issues separated parents bring to court, how these are handled and adjudicated, and what barriers parents encounter when asserting or contesting their parental rights and responsibilities. The thesis builds on large and diverse sets of court decisions and includes both parents’ and children’s perspectives.

Studies I and II concern child maintenance. Study I focuses on liable parents (fathers) who dispute their child maintenance obligations under the guaranteed support scheme and explains why these parents contest their liability despite being legally required to pay. The data build on court decisions on guaranteed support from all of Sweden’s administrative courts, 2014–2019 (n = 723). The findings show that economic inability is a primary reason for non-compliance, often arising from a mismatch between how the agency assesses ability to pay and parents’ economic circumstances. Study II shifts the perspective to resident parents (mothers) who seek to secure their right to child maintenance through the private law maintenance allowance scheme. It explores whether parents’ relative resources affect the monetary outcomes of disputes, comparing cases resolved through mediation and court adjudication. The data consist of court decisions on maintenance allowance from all of Sweden’s district courts, 2016–2020 (n = 327). Results show several barriers to pursuing maintenance allowance in court, suggesting that the system has limited capacity to safeguard children’s rights to higher payments unless the liable parent complies.

Studies III and IV focus on disputes concerning child custody and draw on the same dataset: court decisions on child custody, residence, and visitation from 35 of Sweden’s 48 district courts in 2021 (n = 535). Study III centres parental conflict and analyses the arguments parents use when disputing custody, as well as which argumentative patterns are most likely to lead to sole custody. Five patterns of parental argumentation are identified: ‘Victim-Offender’, ‘Mutual High-Conflict’, ‘Parenting Capacity Concerns’, ‘Lone Carer’, and ‘(Re)-Litigating Non-Resident Parents’. Applicants are most likely to be awarded sole custody in the ‘Victim-Offender’ and ‘Lone Carer’ contexts, and less likely in the ‘Mutual High-Conflict’ context. Study IV addresses the perspective of children and explores their opportunities to have their participation rights realized in custody disputes. The findings suggest that children’s views are most likely to be reported in contexts characterised by ‘Mutual High-Conflict’, and least likely to be included in the ‘Lone Carer’ context.

The combined results of the four studies lead to policy implications spelled out in the introduction.