Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 103
December 2007
Phinikaridou v. Cyprus - 23890/02
Judgment 20.12.2007 [Section I]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Inability to bring a paternity suit as a result of an absolute time-bar that operated despite the applicant’s lack of knowledge of the relevant facts: violation
Facts: In 1991 the Government introduced legislation (the Children (Relatives and Legal Status) Law) enabling children born out of wedlock to seek judicial recognition of their paternity. The limitation period for an application by the child under the Act was three years from the date the child attained its majority or, in the case of children who had already attained their majority, three years from the date the Act entered into force. The applicant, who was already an adult when the Act came into force, did not learn the identity of her biological father until December 1997. In June 1999 she lodged an application with the family court for judicial recognition of paternity. However, this was dismissed on the grounds that the limitation period applicable in her case had expired on 1 November 1994, three years after the Act had entered into force. Her appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed. The applicant complained that the statutory three-year limitation period had prevented her from instituting proceedings.
Law: The Court’s task was to determine whether the respondent State had complied with its positive obligations in its handling of the applicant’s action for judicial recognition of paternity. A limitation period per se was not incompatible with the Convention and in paternity suits could be justified by the desire to ensure legal certainty and finality in family relations. The issue was thus whether the nature of the time-limit and/or the manner in which it was applied was compatible with the Convention and whether a fair balance had been struck between the competing rights and interests. Among the relevant factors to be taken into consideration here were the existence of alternative means of redress or of an exception in cases where knowledge of the biological reality had been acquired only after the time-limit had expired. The yardstick against which these factors were measured was whether a legal presumption had been allowed to prevail over biological and social reality and whether that was compatible with the obligation to secure effective respect for private and family life. Although there was no uniform approach in the legislation of the Contracting States, a significant number did not set a limitation period for children to bring a paternity suit (in contrast with the position where the claimant was the father) and a tendency could be discerned towards greater protection of the right of the child to have its paternal affiliation established.
The Court had difficulty in accepting inflexible limitation periods that applied irrespective of the child’s awareness of the relevant facts and considered that a distinction had to be made between cases in which the child had had no opportunity to find out the facts and those in which it had refrained from instituting proceedings within the statutory time-limit for other reasons. In the instant case, it was clear from the Supreme Court’s judgment that the general interest and the competing rights and interests of the presumed father and his family had been accorded greater weight than the applicant’s right to find out her origins. Even having regard to the State’s margin of appreciation, the application of a rigid time-limit for the exercise of paternity proceedings, regardless of the circumstances of the individual case and in particular, the child’s knowledge of the facts concerning paternity, had impaired the very essence of the applicant’s right to respect for her private life.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – EUR 6,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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