A child custody dispute can quickly become heated. This can create a lot of stress and uncertainty, leaving you concerned about your child’s future and your ability to build and maintain a relationship with them. While you’ll certainly need to be armed with compelling evidence going into your custody hearing and be prepared to speak to why your proposed arrangement is in your child’s best interests, you don’t want to be thrown off-balance by common misconceptions about the child custody process.
That’s why in this post we want to look at some child custody myths. That way you’ll be better prepared to properly advocate heading into your child custody hearing.
There are a lot of misconceptions out there about child custody. Let’s look at some of them so that you have more realistic expectations going into your case:
- The mother is always awarded custody: The laws on child custody are gender neutral. Therefore, the court will assess each parent, their abilities, and their relationship with their child to determine what sort of arrangement is in the child’s best interests. Fathers therefore have an equal right to seek custody of their children.
- The child can pick where they want to live: Although older children can voice their opinion on where and with whom they want to live, this is just one of the many factors that the court will take into account when rendering its determination. The child’s maturity and emotional intelligence could give their opinion more weight, but very rarely is the child’s wishes a determinative factor.
- You can block the other parent from exercising parenting time: You might think that you can prevent the other parent from visiting with your child if you’re angry at them or if they’re behind on their child support obligation, but this isn’t the case. You have to adhere to the visitation order issued by the court. If you stray from it, then the other parent might file a motion to try to hold you in contempt, or they may argue that a custody modification is necessary. If you have safety concerns with the child visiting with their other parent, then you need to address that with the court and have parameters placed in the court’s order.
- Everything has to be battled out in court: Although your custody case may be contentious, it doesn’t have to wind up in court every time a challenge arises. Instead, you and your child’s other parent can try to negotiate resolution to these issues, at which point you can file the agreement with the court to be adopted.
- Your agreement with the other parent is binding: Only court orders are binding. So, even if you hash out an agreement with the other parent, don’t expect it to be enforceable until the court formally adopts it and makes it a court order.
Don’t leave your child custody case to chance
In the blink of an eye, your child custody case can go sideways. While that can be stressful to think about, there are effective ways to reduce the risk of that happening. This includes knowing how to avoid the myths mentioned above, gathering strong evidence, and developing persuasive arguments that speak to applicable elements of the law. By doing that and anticipating and preparing to counter the other parent’s arguments, you can increase your chances of securing an outcome that’s best for your child.
