A separated parent who wants to move a child abroad usually researches one thing — whether the child can get a passport and leave. That question has an answer, and it is more permissive than most people expect. It is also the wrong question, because a lawfully issued passport and a lawful exit say nothing about whether the move was permitted. Those are two different statutes with two different tests, and a parent can satisfy one while breaching the other.
Article numbers below are read from the consolidated Porodični zakon ("Službeni list RCG" 001/07 of 09.01.2007; "Službeni list CG" 053/16 of 11.08.2016 and 076/20 of 28.07.2020, consolidation stamped 2023), the Zakon o putnim ispravama ("Službeni list CG" 21/2008, 25/2008, 40/2011 — by another act — 39/2013, 54/2016 and 146/2021, from the Ministry of Interior's own published copy), and the Zakon o međunarodnom privatnom pravu (announced text, "Službeni list CG" 1/2014, later 6/2014, 11/2014, 14/2014 and 47/2015). All read on 5 September 2026. General information, not advice on a specific file.
Who exercises the parental right, and what that phrase does not mean
Article 60(1) vests the parental right in mother and father jointly, and Article 60(3) provides that a parent cannot renounce it. Article 69 defines parental care as covering custody, upbringing, education, representation, maintenance and the management of the child's property.
Exercise is a separate question from entitlement. Article 76(1) has parents exercise the right jointly and by agreement while they live together. Article 76(2) allows joint exercise to continue when they do not live together — but only if they conclude an agreement on joint exercise and the court assesses that agreement to be in the child's best interests. Article 77(2) then requires something that foreign lawyers rarely put in a parenting plan: the agreement on joint exercise must include an agreement on what will be treated as the child's prebivalište — the child's registered residence.
Article 78 lists the situations where one parent exercises alone: where the other parent is unknown, has died, or has been fully deprived of parental rights or of legal capacity; where only that parent lives with the child and the court has not yet ruled; and, on the basis of a court decision, where the parents live apart and either concluded no agreement, or concluded one the court found not to be in the child's best interests, or concluded a sole-exercise agreement the court approved.
Article 79(1) describes what a sole-exercise agreement contains: entrusting the child to one parent, the other parent's contribution to maintenance, and how the child's personal relationship with the other parent will be maintained. Article 79(2) then transfers exercise to the parent the child is entrusted to.
That transfer is where the misunderstanding starts.
The four decisions that still need both parents
Article 79(3) states it plainly. The parent who does not exercise the parental right retains the right and duty to maintain the child, to keep up personal relations with the child, and — this is the part that matters here — to decide jointly and by agreement with the exercising parent on questions that substantially affect the child's life.
Article 79(4) then defines those questions. In particular, they are:
| Question that substantially affects the child's life (Art. 79(4)) | Practical trigger |
|---|---|
| The child's education | Changing school, changing school system or language of instruction |
| Undertaking major medical interventions | Elective surgery, significant treatment decisions |
| Change of the child's prebivalište | Relocating the child, including relocating abroad |
| Disposal of the child's property of great value | Selling or charging assets the child owns |
Read together with Article 79(2), the effect is narrow and precise: sole exercise transfers day-to-day decision-making, not the decision to move the child. A parent holding a sole-exercise order who relocates the child to another country without the other parent's agreement has not exercised a right the order gave them.
One qualification, stated rather than glossed over. Article 79 is headed as the article on the agreement for sole exercise, and paragraphs (3) and (4) sit inside it — but they are drafted as a general rule about "the parent who does not exercise the parental right", not as a term of that agreement. Whether they bite identically where sole exercise rests on a court decision under Article 78 rather than on an agreement is a reading we would want tested against the terms of the particular order, and we have not found Montenegrin case law settling it.
Article 79a points the same way from the other direction. A parent who exercises the parental right alone is under a positive duty to enable and encourage the child's personal relations with the other parent, with relatives and with people to whom the child is particularly close, unless a court decision limits those relations — and the parent who has contact must not obstruct the other in exercising the parental right.
What the passport statute actually allows
Now the other layer. The Travel Documents Act governs travel documents for Montenegrin citizens (Article 1); a foreign child's passport is a matter for the state that issues it.
| Provision | Rule |
|---|---|
| Article 26(3) | For a person under 18, the passport application is filed by one parent with the written consent of the other, or by the legal representative |
| Article 26(4) | Exceptionally — in urgent cases, or where issuing the passport is in the child's special interest — a passport may be issued without the other parent's consent, on the written consent of the guardianship authority for the child's place of residence, or the place of application if the child has no registered residence in Montenegro |
| Article 27(1) | A child in the Article 26(3) or 26(4) position may travel to another state on the approval of one parent or other legal representative |
| Article 27(3) | That travel approval is valid for one year from issue |
| Article 28(1) | Where one parent exercises the parental right, the application for the passport or for the Article 27 approval is filed by the parent the child is entrusted to, with the written consent of the other parent — except in the Article 26(4) case |
| Article 28(2) | If the other parent objects or is unavailable, the Ministry proceeds under Article 26(4) |
Three things follow. Travel abroad needs the approval of one parent, not both (Article 27(1)). That approval expires after a year (Article 27(3)) — a detail that catches families who obtained one at the time of separation and assume it still stands. And an objection by the other parent does not stop the process: Article 28(2) routes it to Article 26(4), where the guardianship authority's written consent substitutes for the parent's.
Where the two layers come apart
Put the statutes side by side and the gap is obvious. Under the Travel Documents Act, a parent facing an objecting or unavailable co-parent can obtain a passport through Article 28(2) and Article 26(4), and can supply the travel approval themselves under Article 27(1). Under the Family Act, the change of the child's prebivalište is still a matter for joint and agreed decision under Article 79(4), whether or not that parent exercises the parental right alone.
Using that administrative route to pre-empt the family-law decision is precisely what creates the exposure, because nothing in the Travel Documents Act purports to decide the family-law question. An administrative decision that a passport may issue in the child's special interest is not a determination that relocation is in the child's best interests, and the guardianship authority's consent under Article 26(4) is consent to a document, not to a move.
This is why "the passport was issued lawfully" and "the child's exit was not blocked at the border" are answers to a question nobody was asking. The exposure created by moving the child sits in the Family Act, and, where the child is taken to another state, in a separate international layer whose applicability has to be checked against the current treaty position of both states concerned — we are not asserting that position here.
If the other parent will not agree
The route is the court, not the airport. Where parents cannot agree on a question under Article 79(4), the disagreement is resolved in proceedings on the exercise of the parental right, and the framework the court works within is set by the same statute.
Article 80 obliges the guardianship authority to support parents and take measures to protect the child's rights, and requires courts, other authorities, medical, educational and other institutions, non-governmental organisations and citizens to notify it as soon as they learn that a parent is unable to exercise the parental right. Article 81 allows it to warn parents about errors in upbringing and refer them to counselling. Article 82 allows it to place the exercise of the parental right under supervision, with a supervision programme and a named person who monitors the child's development, checks the parents' conduct and reports back.
Beyond that sit two escalating measures. Article 85(1) allows a court, in non-contentious proceedings, to limit the parental right of a parent who exercises it unconscientiously; Article 85(2) provides that a limitation may remove one or more rights and duties — except the duty to maintain the child. Article 86(2) caps a limitation at one year, and Article 86(3) provides that an appeal does not suspend enforcement; before the year expires the court must review and either restore the right, extend the measure, or impose another.
Article 87 governs deprivation, and its definition of gross neglect is directly relevant to relocation disputes. It includes a parent who avoids maintaining the child, who avoids maintaining personal relations with a child they do not live with, or who prevents the child's personal relations with the parent the child does not live with. Obstructing contact is not a neutral act in this statute. Article 89 allows the other parent, the guardianship authority or the state prosecutor to start deprivation proceedings, and Article 90 allows a court already seized of a matrimonial or parent-and-child dispute to rule on deprivation of its own motion.
The child's own position
Article 67(1) gives the child the right to express an opinion on all matters concerning them, and Article 67(2) to (4) obliges parents and everyone else deciding such matters to enable that opinion, to supply the information the child needs to form it in an intelligible way, and to give it due weight according to the child's age and maturity — with maturity assessed, under Article 67(5), by physical, emotional, intellectual and social development. There is no single age at which the child's view becomes decisive, but there are ages at which the statute gives the child a decision outright: under Article 65(2), a child of 15 who is capable of reasoning chooses which secondary school to attend. In a relocation dispute that is not a side point, because the school question is itself one of the Article 79(4) matters.
Which court decides
Article 132 of the Private International Law Act gives a Montenegrin court or authority jurisdiction to decide on the custody, raising and upbringing of children under parental care where the child is a Montenegrin national or is habitually resident in Montenegro, and also where the child needs that authority's protection. Note that the test is disjunctive: nationality alone is enough, so moving a Montenegrin child abroad does not by itself remove the Montenegrin court. Article 130(2) adds the other route — where a Montenegrin court has jurisdiction over the marriage itself, that jurisdiction extends to parental care, and Article 130(3) applies the same rules to a cohabiting union.
Before you book the move
If you are planning to relocate a child from Montenegro, or you have been told a child is about to be relocated, the documents that decide the outcome are the parental-right order and any agreement under Articles 77 or 79 — not the passport file. Send us the order or agreement, where each parent and the child are habitually resident, and what has actually been proposed, and we will identify whether the move falls inside Article 79(4), what the Travel Documents Act permits independently of that, and which of the Article 82, 85 and 87 routes fits the facts. The money side of the same separation is set out in child maintenance across a border, the forum and recognition questions in cross-border divorce and Montenegro, the property side in divorce and property division, and how we run these files in our family law practice.
