The Relations of the Minor with the Parents and Extended Family. Assessing the Best Interest of the Child. Criteria of Assessment

AuthorAndreea Draghici, Andreea Tabacu, Amelia Singh
Pages86-94
Legal Sciences
86
The Relations of the Minor with the Parents and Extended Family.
Assessing the Best Interest of the Child. Criteria of Assessment
Andreea Drăghici
1
, Andreea Tabacu
2
, Amelia Singh
3
1
University of Pitesti, Administrative and Jurical Sciences Faculty,
andidraghici @yahoo.com
2
Court of Appel, andreea.tabacu@upit.ro
3
University of Pitesti, Administrative and Jurical Sciences Faculty, singh.amelia@zahoo.com
Abstract. Without any doubt, the most important principle which governing the child protection is the
principle of best interests of the child. Besides, t he protection of this interest is the stated purpose of all the
international conventions and the domestic legislation. Despite this, of his importance, the principle is only
observed, without content or to enjoy so me conceptualization, the criteria assessing being left to the
discretion of the c ourt and the competent authori ties. It was supported in the literature that the establis hment
of an invariabl e content for all issues incident to the child protection might not be possible through the light
of variety situations can find each child. In this way, the present s tudy identifies a priority order of those
assessing criteria in t he matter of the child relations with parents and extended family. As the exertion of the
parental rights and obligations must be governed by the same principle, the identification of those criteria is
realized analyzing the internal case law in this field and ECHR jurisprudence. The papers originality consist
in the fact that the research tries to establish the content of this principle, without straightening the action area
of the competent decisional authorities (public authorities, judges), t he conclusion of this study being
addressed also to the doctrinaires, also to the practicants.
Keywords: right visit; right to privacy and family; custody; parental rights
1. Introduction
The best interest of the child represents the criterion which must guide any decision or action taken by
individuals or authorized institutions, either public or private, having a direct impact upon the child.
Although all the regulations in the field of child protection make a direct reference to this principle,
creating the impression that all their decisions must gravitate around it, to this day there is no legal act
establishing its content.
We are certainly not dealing with a legal gap, but with a voluntary omission from the part of the
legislator, who, unable to envisage the entire range of complex and various situations a child can be in,
chooses to pass the responsibility to the competent institutions (legal courts, administrative structures),
which are supposed to evaluate the specific circumstances and to decide with accuracy which is the
best interest of the child. We are therefore talking about a concept of lege lata, a legal notion with
variable content, which must be decided upon by a judge or a competent authority. The legal practice

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