A divorce decree, contrary to popular belief, does not merely provide for the dissolution of the parties' marriage. In the judgment, in accordance with the current legislation, the court must obligatorily include other decisions that will regulate relations between the former spouses.
Thus, in a judgment declaring a divorce, the court decides on parental authority over a joint minor child of both spouses and the parents' contact with the child, and decides in what amount each spouse is obliged to pay for the maintenance and upbringing of the child, (that is, colloquially speaking, it also decides on alimony).
Parental authority is nothing more than the entirety of a child's affairs and custody, management of the child's property and representation of the child. The court may entrust the exercise of parental authority to both parents, in particular if they present a written agreement on the manner of exercising parental authority and maintaining contact with the child after divorce, if it considers it compatible with the child's welfare. Under current law, siblings should grow up together, unless the welfare of the child requires a different arrangement.
If there is no agreement on parental authority and contact with the child between the parents, the decision in this regard is made independently by the court, taking into account the child's right to be raised by both parents. In practice, it is most often the case that the court entrusts the exercise of parental authority to one of the parents, limiting the parental authority of the other to certain duties and powers in relation to the person of the child, if the welfare of the child supports this. By certain duties and powers is meant the right to co-determine the child's most important matters, i.e., for example, those concerning the choice of school, the method of medical treatment, or consent to the child's travel abroad.
At the unanimous request of the parties, if there is an agreement between them in this regard, the court shall not rule on maintaining contact with the child. Then the parties shall establish such contacts between themselves on an ongoing basis.
If, as naturally happens extremely often, the spouses occupy a shared apartment, the court in the divorce judgment will also rule on the use of this apartment for the duration of the divorced spouses' cohabitation in it. In exceptional cases, when one of the spouses by his grossly reprehensible behavior prevents cohabitation, the court may order his eviction at the request of the other spouse. At the unanimous request of the parties, the court may, in a judgment pronouncing divorce, also rule on the division of the joint dwelling or on the allocation of the dwelling to one of the spouses, if the other spouse agrees to vacate it without providing a replacement dwelling and a substitute room, provided that the division or its allocation to one of the spouses is possible. When deciding on joint housing for spouses, the court shall take into account, first of all, the needs of the children and the spouse to whom it entrusts the exercise of parental authority.
The court may also divide the joint property of the spouses in a divorce judgment, but only if carrying out this division does not cause undue delay in the proceedings. According to the wording of the Supreme Court's decision of June 16, 2016, issued in the case numbered V CZ 25/16, carrying out in a divorce judgment the division of the parties' joint property does not cause undue delay in the proceedings not only when there is no dispute between the parties as to the composition and manner of division of this property, but also when the clarification of the disputed circumstances between the parties, or such circumstances that the court is obliged to determine ex officio, requires the conduct of evidentiary proceedings only to a limited extent in terms of subject matter and time. The decision as to whether a party's request for the division of the joint property should be left unexamined in the event that carrying out such a division would cause undue delay in the proceedings shall be included by the court, as the case may be, either in a separate order issued in the course of the divorce proceedings or in the operative part of the divorce judgment.
