This time we are not going to talk about one of our cases. This time we need to talk about Isidora.
Isidora was two years and seven months old. On Sunday, May 17, 2026, she went to see her father, according to a court-authorized direct and regular visitation arrangement. He had gone to pick her up at eleven in the morning. They had until six in the afternoon. Hours that, on paper, should have been for meeting, bonding, and care. Hours that ended in tragedy.
Around five in the afternoon, a neighbor heard a noise in the parking area of the building in the Las Condes district. She looked out. And found Isidora. The girl had fallen from the eleventh floor. When the police went up to the apartment, they had to wake the father. He found out what had happened forty minutes later. The investigation determined that he had consumed alcohol. His partner was also asleep. The bedroom window where Isidora was did not have a safety mesh, despite being at a height that any adult would have considered an obvious risk for a child her age.
We write this with respect. Isidora was not a file or a case study. She was a real child, with a mother who waited for her to return that Sunday. And her story deserves more than momentary outrage: it deserves an uncomfortable question about the system that should have protected her. That Sunday, Isidora was legally under her father’s care. And he was asleep.
The Civil Code in its article 224 establishes that personal care is based on the principle of co-responsibility, by virtue of which both parents—whether living together or separated—will participate actively, equitably, and permanently in the upbringing and education of their children. That principle admits no degrees or pauses: there is no minimum threshold of presence that suffices to fulfill it. When a father or mother has their child in their care, whether permanently, for weeks, days, or even a few hours, they are not “helping” or “collaborating”: they are fulfilling an obligation that requires presence, attention, and effective care.
What happened that Sunday was not just a family tragedy. It was the absolute failure of that duty that brings us back to a question the system rarely asks itself with enough honesty: how does a family court know that a father or mother has the minimum conditions to provide that care?
When a judge sets a direct and regular visitation arrangement, the law requires them to consider, among other criteria, “the aptitude of the parents to guarantee the child’s well-being and the possibility of providing an appropriate environment, according to their age.” That phrase, “appropriate environment, according to their age,” is not decorative. It is an obligation for concrete evaluation. A two-year-old child in an apartment on the eleventh floor, with a window without a safety mesh, is exactly the type of environment that criterion should have allowed to verify. But in practice, that verification almost never exists. Most of the time, it is simply presumed.
In most cases, no one verifies if the space where a two-year-old child will stay has basic safety measures. No one checks if the adult picking them up will consume alcohol. No one evaluates if the person assuming that care truly understands what it means to supervise a child who still cannot assess their own risks.
The system rests, almost always, on an implicit presumption of adult responsibility. And that presumption, when there are no minimum verification mechanisms, can be brutally insufficient.
In the criminal sphere, the Eastern Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office formally charged the father with homicide by omission with eventual intent. The charge is neither minor nor casual. Homicide by omission occurs when a person, having the legal obligation to prevent another’s death, does not act to prevent it. The central element is the position of guarantor: whoever has a child under their care by virtue of a court order assumes, by law, the obligation to protect them.
Eventual intent does not require that the father wanted Isidora’s death. It requires something different: having consciously represented an obvious risk without taking measures to avoid it. The Prosecutor’s Office argued that he knew he lived on the eleventh floor, that he was responsible for a two-year-old child incapable of understanding the danger, and that the window had no mesh. An architect by profession, that risk was not unknown to him.
The 4th Guarantee Court of Santiago initially rejected that charge and considered that the facts could constitute a quasi-criminal homicide—an applicable figure when there is negligence but no conscious acceptance of risk. The legal difference is not minor: while quasi-criminal homicide contemplates considerably lower penalties, homicide by omission with eventual intent can imply up to twenty years of imprisonment. Subsequently, the Court of Appeals overturned that decision and ordered the preventive detention of the accused.
But beyond how that criminal discussion ends, one question remains intact: what level of neglect are we willing to consider tolerable in an adult who temporarily has a two-year-old child in their care? The answer should be simple: none.
As family lawyers, we cannot look at this case without also questioning the system in which we work.
The law provides that courts can suspend or restrict visitation arrangements when they “manifestly harm the child’s well-being.” That tool exists. The problem is that it is designed to react, not to prevent. No one can invoke it before something happens because the system does not require verifying the conditions under which that arrangement will be exercised. There is no protocol that obliges verifying the residence, evaluating minimum parental competencies, or reviewing if the environment is safe for the child’s age before the first visit begins.
Family courts set direct and regular visitation arrangements prioritizing, above all, the emotional bond. That has real value: the relationship between parents and children matters. But there is a dimension that often remains entrusted to the assumption that “everything will be fine”: the concrete capacity for daily care.
Because caring for a two-year-old child is not just an emotional matter. It requires a minimum standard of attention, supervision, and protection according to their vulnerability and inability to understand risks. The Convention on the Rights of the Child in its article 19 no. 1—which Chile ratified and which has direct application in our courts—obliges the State to take all appropriate measures to protect the child against neglect or negligent treatment “while under the custody of the parents or any other person who has them in their care.” That obligation is not fulfilled only by issuing a sentence. It is also fulfilled by creating mechanisms so that sentence does not become a blank check.
Isidora’s mother said something that should not be forgotten: “this was a negligent act by a father who was caring for a minor and did not take the necessary precautions to protect her life or physical integrity.”
She said it outside the Legal Medical Service, while the country tried to understand a tragedy that seemed impossible to explain. And what she describes is not just the conduct of a man: it is the exact gap that the system failed to cover.
The best interests of the child cannot continue to be just a phrase that opens rulings. Law 21,430 on Guarantees and Comprehensive Protection of the Rights of Children and Adolescents defines it today simultaneously as a right, a principle, and a procedural norm. It must materialize into something concrete: verifying minimum conditions before a child leaves through that door. Demanding that whoever picks them up understands what that means: not only loving them but actively protecting them, constantly.
A father’s or mother’s right to relate to their children can never rest solely on the hope that they will act responsibly. Because no child should be left solely to trust.
