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Brazil — Lei nº 12.318/2010 Repeal Movement (2025-2026)

TL;DR. Brazil's 2010 Parental Alienation Law — internationally cited as the archetype for statutory codification of PA — is actively under repeal as of December 2025. The Câmara dos Deputados' Constitution and Justice Commission (CCJ) approved the repeal bill on 3 December 2025 with unusual cross-partisan support. The move is driven by (a) UN Special Rapporteur Reem Alsalem's September 2025 call for repeal, framing the statute as harmful to domestic-violence survivors, and (b) an established Brazilian record of the law being invoked by alleged abusers against protective mothers. Companion note to statutes/brazil-lei-12318-2010.md. Any content on the corpus that continues to treat Lei 12.318 as stable law without acknowledging the repeal process is factually out of date.

Maintained by Alan Markson · Last reviewed: 2026-07-31 · License: CC BY 4.0

Timeline

2010–2024 — Statute stable, internationally exported

Lei nº 12.318 of 26 August 2010 codified parental alienation as a statutory category, defined alienating behaviours, and authorised a tiered set of remedies (warning, contact-supervision reversal, custody-reassignment, therapeutic follow-up). Brazil became the first major jurisdiction to statutorily codify PA and served as the reference model for Mexico (Ciudad de México 2014, Nuevo León 2018), Puerto Rico (2020), and a number of other Latin-American state-level statutes. See statutes/brazil-lei-12318-2010.md for the underlying statutory text and doctrinal reception.

September 2025 — UN Special Rapporteur intervention

Reem Alsalem (UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls) issued a public press statement — "Brazil: Parliament must repeal harmful parental alienation law" — on 8 September 2025. The statement argued that Lei 12.318 was being used in Brazilian family courts to discredit domestic-abuse allegations by mothers and to force contact between children and abusive fathers, in ways that contravened Brazil's obligations under CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The statement operationally sequels Alsalem's 2023 A/HRC/53/36 report "Custody, violence against women, and violence against children" and her 2026 A/HRC/62/49 "Violence against mothers" report — both of which situate PA-driven custody outcomes as a documented pattern of secondary victimisation.

3 December 2025 — Câmara CCJ approves repeal

The Constitution and Justice Commission (Comissão de Constituição e Justiça — CCJ) of the Câmara dos Deputados approved on 3 December 2025 the report on PL 1372/23, recommending full revocation of Lei 12.318/2010. The vote had unusual cross-partisan support — legislators from ideological blocs that rarely coalesce (progressive-left protective-motherhood advocacy + centrist evangelical family-law reformers concerned about state overreach on parenting) both voted in favour. The next constitutional step is a plenary vote in the Câmara, followed by the Senado.

Status as of 2026-07-31

  • Repeal not yet finalised. CCJ approval is a committee-level milestone, not enactment.
  • Plenary vote pending in the Câmara; Senate consideration would follow any Câmara approval; presidential sanction or veto would then be required.
  • The law remains in force. Brazilian family courts continue to adjudicate under Lei 12.318 while the repeal process proceeds.
  • International attention on the Brazilian legislative outcome is significant — a full repeal would materially shift the global comparative-law landscape (the archetype statute being retracted by its originating jurisdiction).

Why this matters for the corpus

Lei 12.318 has been the reference-point statute for every corpus discussion of statutory PA codification. The active repeal process changes the doctrinal picture in three ways:

  1. The archetype is contested at home. Corpus content that cited Lei 12.318 as an "established" or "stable" model must acknowledge that the law is now facing active repeal — otherwise the corpus overstates the doctrinal consensus.
  2. The Latin-American statutory-codification cluster (Brazil, Mexico state-level, Puerto Rico) becomes doctrinally fragmented. Mexico and Puerto Rico statutes are not currently under active repeal, but the removal of the Brazilian anchor changes the argumentative weight of the whole cluster.
  3. UN comparative reference points shift. Alsalem's 2025 press statement + her 2023 and 2026 reports are increasingly cited in Council of Europe (GREVIO), OSCE, and inter-American human-rights fora. Corpus content on international-body PA positions must be current with the 2025 Alsalem sequence to avoid appearing dated.

Practical implication for practitioners

  • Brazilian practitioners: treat Lei 12.318 as active law but with contingent authority — pleadings that rely on the statute as a load-bearing foundation should hedge for repeal.
  • Comparative practitioners: cite Brazil as an example of statutory codification with the caveat that the statute is under active repeal since December 2025.
  • International-body work: Alsalem's 2025 statement is now the primary UN reference point for the abuse-defence critique of PA codification.

Disclaimer

Legislative-process summary based on Brazilian government primary sources (Agência Brasil, Câmara dos Deputados) and the UN OHCHR press office as of 2026-07-31. Not legal advice. Practitioners in Brazil should consult current Câmara and Senado session records for the most recent status of PL 1372/23.

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