The absolute abandonment of the non-emancipated child as cause of deprivation of parental authority in the Colombian legal order

Abstract

This review article addresses the deprivation of parental authority based on the cause of abandonment of the non-emancipated child, which, in the words of the Civil Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice in a ruling issued on May 25, 2006, can only be configured when it is proven that said abandonment is absolute. This decision was adopted with the support of a ruling from 1987, ignoring the immediate precedent contained in the ruling issued on January 23, 1990, through which the abandonment of the son had been understood in a broader concept. Therefore, the duty of transparency and argumentation to motivate the change of line was breached and, additionally, a pre-constitutional concept is brought that is not consistent with the duty of protection of the child against all forms of abandonment enshrined in article 44 of the political constitution of 1991, the doctrine of comprehensive protection implicit in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the various forms of abandonment enshrined in article 20 of Law 1098 of 2006 "by which the Code of Childhood and Adolescence". Thus, this article aims to demonstrate the need to adapt the concept of child abandonment as a cause of deprivation of parental authority to the new constitutional, conventional and legal parameters.