Today we are going to talk about the top mistakes that people make in child custody cases. People face so many problems of having custody of their children. There are so many family laws there in which they have to go through.
Some people fed up of these messy laws because without a good attorney it becomes so difficult to fight their cases and eventually they lose the custody of their beloved children.
Additionally, it’s not easy for everyone to fight their cases by themselves because it’s a law matter and everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not a simple contract in which two parties can easily bound with each other it’s a custody case and you have to go through a lot of legal matters.
Some people say that custody cases are like a game of chess and strategy matters very much if you are talking about high-end complex custody cases. Many times these are post decree or they are after an initial divorce. But not always, sometimes it might be in a very, very messy divorce. And we know the game we as family attorneys understand what the courts want to see.
And if when people mess up their case and they lose custody, it’s because they are making tactical errors. They do not understand the situation or the rules of the game that they have to play now. It might sound super cavalier for me to call this a game. These are your children, this is your life. I understand that the stakes are incredibly high but I also know how you can win, how you can avoid losing custody and it’s fairly simple and it’s fairly predictable in family court.
So why do people lose custody either number one? They do not know what it is they are supposed to do.
Or number two they are prideful and even though they know what they are supposed to do. They refused to do what we attorneys or the court ask them to do as a matter of principle.
Or number three, they are incapable of doing what the court is asking them to do.
So let’s go through these three possibilities.
Number One
You don’t know what you are supposed to do. If you are self-represented or you have an attorney who does not practice in family law or who whatever reason doesn’t have a lot of experience with the judges with the cases. Maybe you don’t know, maybe it’s a bad strategy. Maybe you don’t know what it is that you are supposed to do.
And essentially what you are supposed to do is focus on having a relationship with your child and a positive relationship with your child. Focus on getting parenting time with your child and making that parenting time meaningful. Focus on meeting the needs of your child, focus on seeing them as a human and as the centre of the universe in the family court custody case. Do not focus on the other parent.
That is the lawyer’s job. Your job is to focus on your own child.
Now if you are representing yourself this can be hard because you have to be the lawyer and you have to be the parent. And as a parent you must focus on your children and as a lawyer you do need to bring forth any truly troubling issues with the other parent. And there’s an art to this and the art is to always focus their behaviour on the child.
So the child is the centre of the universe. The most important thing meeting the child’s needs and believing what the child says is key to winning child custody cases.
So Why Don’t Parents Do That?
Well, maybe you don’t know, maybe you don’t know what it is that the judge wants to hear. Or you do know that’s what you’re supposed to do but it’s just too difficult. Or you are prideful you want to tell the judge about what an awful person is the other parent is that they smoke marijuana, or they sleep into late, or they don’t feed the kid. These are not your focus.
If you want to attack the other parents on fitness, then you can say things like my child’s needs aren’t being met because the other parent is failing to do X or you must focus on how the parent’s behavior affects the child.
Every time you think about how you are going to attack the other parent, make sure it’s in terms of how it relates to your kiddo.
Let me give you another example, let’s say you want to say that dad stays out all night and has lots of girlfriends. And he is bringing strange women around the child. So that might be something that you would say in court.
Hey, this person has had I can prove he’s had six girlfriends in the last year and my child has met all of them. That’s not good enough.
Instead, you might say things like, the father has a history of choosing dangerous women that have exposed the child to pornography, drug paraphernalia, or father has exposed the child pornography, paraphernalia through the girlfriend.
So everything that you are doing needs to be focused on your child. And if you need help with that get a consultation maybe even a couple of hours with an attorney who can help you script your case to win, to get what you want, and to make sure that you don’t lose custody. The way you lose custody is by failing to understand the game that you are in and failing to craft your testimony and your facts to the way the judge needs to hear it.
Conclusion
There are many more legal matters that should be considered while filing the custody case of your child. It’s is almost impossible for a person to win a custody case without the consultation of a legal attorney because this is their job to face the judgment day to day basis and they know how to handle the case.
