Custody and home to children, alternating parents does not work

The choice, in shared custody, to leave the home to the children, making the parents rotate in the same house, does not work. The Tribunal of Cuneo, whose decision had been confirmed by the Court of Appeal of Turin (decree 314/24), retraced its steps, with respect to the decision to make mum and dad rotate, for once. At the time, the judges had affirmed that the offspring's interest in remaining in the family home was worthy of protection to the point of leaving the domestic home to the minors, giving the parents the pleasure of commuting, to take turns at their side. The condition imposed by the judges of merit was to live in the same house every other week, to be near the two daughters aged 4 and 7, who were used to the presence of both.

Today, the children's main interest is to live in a serene environment. This is why the couple, unmarried but who had cohabited permanently for some years, decided in a joint appeal to ask the Court of Cuneo to review the condition of 'cohabiting' on alternate weeks. The appeal states: "Due to the excessive onerousness, also emotional, imposed on the parties by the alternating cohabitation in the same house, de facto outbreaks have arisen that do not allow the continuation of said cohabitation and, therefore, the gentlemen (...) have decided to proceed with the modification of the regulation of the rights and interests of the above-mentioned minor daughters". The Court of Cuneo has no choice but to grant the request, confirming shared custody, with the possibility of exercising parental responsibility separately in ordinary administration and acting instead by mutual agreement, in mutual respect, in decisions of greater interest to the daughters. The woman, who has her own home, leaves the family home to her father. A peace that seems to have returned after the backtracking of the failed two hearts and a hut experiment.

For lawyer Alessio Solinas, who with lawyers Nicola Schellino and Veronica Rinaldi, defended the lady, 'The fact that these people no longer live under the same roof has brought serenity back. Fights were frequent and for the most trivial reasons: from the children's toys to the use of electrical appliances'.

An epilogue foretold in the opinion of lawyer Carlo Rimini, professor of private law at the University of Milan 'The affair shows how difficult it is to impose solutions,' says Carlo Rimini, 'that heavily affect people's lives, if there is no agreement. Only when there is agreement can formulas like this work'.

In fact, it was the Supreme Court itself that had indicated the need for an agreement in cases such as the one examined by the judges of Cuneo and Turin. The Supreme Court, in fact, in Order No. 6810 of 7 March 2023, defining a dispute, after the end of a more uxorio cohabitation with the birth of children, had not ruled out the possibility of "...ordering the assignment of the family home to the children, with rotation of the parents...". Clarifying, however, that such an option "presupposes a serious and agreed organisation of the parents for this purpose, with respect for and in the exercise of each one's parental responsibility", a choice that, in the event of agreement, "could have responded to the real interest of the minors and their growth needs and been suitable for consolidating the habitat and living habits, the purpose for which the assignment of the family home is intended...". But without a real pax in the couple, better to return to the tradition of separate homes. And this is what the Court of Cuneo has now done.