Population Registration and Shared Custody

Who Decides Where the Child Is Registered?

If you have joint custody, you and your co-parent decide together where your children are registered. If you can't agree, Skatteverket (the Swedish Tax Agency) investigates and decides for you. The key question is where the children have their "domicile" — in practice, where they regularly sleep the most nights per month.

How Skatteverket Assesses Equal Shared Custody

If one parent still lives in what used to be the family home, and the children spend half their time there, the children keep their registration at that address.

If both parents have moved to new homes, Skatteverket makes an overall assessment of the children's living situation. Factors include:

• The distance from each home to the children’s school or preschool
• Whether either home is in the same area as the previous family home
• Whether the children have lived with one of the guardians for an extended period

Why the Registered Address Matters for School and Support

For many families, the registered address makes little practical difference — as long as cooperation works well and mail, dental appointments, and doctors’ letters flow easily between the two homes.

But the address can affect your children’s right to school placement, school transportation, and various forms of special support. This becomes obvious when you choose a school or apply for a preschool place: if you and your co-parent are registered in the same municipality (kommun) but in different areas, the registered address generally determines where the children can go to school.

If you are registered in different municipalities, the address can also affect services like school transportation, which usually only applies within the municipality where the child is registered.

How You Can Make It Easier for Your Child

The best thing you can do is live relatively close to each other — ideally in the same neighborhood, or at least the same municipality. It also helps to build stable communication and a reliable way to share information, so both of you can easily make everyday decisions about the children, together or on your own.

Tip: Keep Everything About the Kids in One Place

The Co-parenting app gives you tools for stable communication, simple planning, and keeping track of shared costs. Having everything that concerns the children in one app is a genuine relief — no more scattered emails, text messages, and WhatsApp threads.