A custody study is a way for a neutral evaluator to meet with the entire family and other contacts and professionals to do an investigation into what would be in the children’s best interest in a parenting plan. For instance, an evaluator could be a psychologist or a licensed social worker. That psychologist is an […]
Child Custody
What advice would you give someone considering going to court to seek visitation of a grandchild?
I would caution them to think about the larger family dynamic. If you have to sue your own child to get access to your grandchild, what is that going to do to the bigger family situation? What I do see with some frequency is, one parent is out of the picture – either voluntarily or […]
Can a parent stop paying child support if the primary parent is preventing them from exercising visitation with their child?
No. By law, the two things are totally unrelated. Child support is an obligation of the parent who’s ordered to pay it, and it has nothing to do with the conduct of the parent who receives the child support. The lack of parenting time or a lack of what we used to called visitation does […]
Under what circumstances can a grandparent get court-ordered visitation?
Each state varies dramatically on when a grandparent even has the ability to ask a court to order visitation. In New Mexico, there are four specific fact patterns that give a grandparent that ability to go to court, which we call standing. First, the biological parent is deceased or the child is being put up […]
What are the first things to think about after a custody case has been filed?
When a custody case has been filed, the attorney will have an in-depth talk with the client about winning custody. Sometimes clients have an unrealistic expectation about what might happen. Sometimes they don’t really know what can happen in a custody case. The attorney would want to really listen to the story of their family, […]
If somebody has a custody order from another state, is it enforceable in Illinois?
A custody order, we now refer to as allocation judgment. That document is going to talk about the parenting schedule that the parents are going to follow. Where is the child or the children going to be on any given day? How are we going to divide up the holidays, whether they be school holidays, […]
What rights do grandparents have to their grandchildren?
Grandparents have either the rights to visit with their grandchildren, under certain circumstances, or if their parents are unable or unwilling to raise them on their own, the grandparents can either seek custody or, more commonly, guardianship of the grandchildren. Again, it has to be under certain circumstances, but basically that’s what we think of […]
How does child support work if the custodial parent lives in a different state or even country?
Interstate child support is governed by the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) and that allows for enforcement of child support between states without the person getting support having to run around every state and track them down. All states in the U.S. are required to have something similar to what we call the Division […]
What are the different types of parental rights and responsibilities in Illinois?
The first of the three principal areas that we have to make decisions in is education. That’s going to be the choice of schools, the choice of tutors, are the kids going to receive a public education from a public facility or are they going to be enrolled in a private school. The education decisions […]
If one parent has primary custody of the children, can he or she move to a different state or country with them?
If so, how would such a move affect visitation schedules?
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