Questions To Ask A Lawyer About Child Custody

What’s the Difference Between Legal and Physical Custody?

One of the most important things to understand when going through a custody battle is the types of custody you can have. Legal custody involves the ability to make decisions about your child’s life, such as where they go to school and what religion they are raised in. Typically, both parents share legal custody of their children, even if one parent has no physical custody.

Physical custody defines who physically has the child, when, and where the child lives. There are a variety of ways that physical custody can be split up. When deciding how physical custody is decided, there are a variety of things that the court will take into consideration.

What Will the Court Consider?

The courts look at various factors in parents’ lives when deciding how to divide physical custody of children:

• Relationship between child and parents
• Health of each parent
• Developmental needs of the child
• Emotional needs of the child
• Home environment
• Ability of the parent to care for the child

Your custody lawyer will work with you to exemplify your ability to care for your children and your ability to be available and care for them.

How Does Visitation Work?

Like custody, visitation is determined based on a variety of factors. You can have a variety of different visitation schedules based on what type of schedule will work the best for you, your co-parent, and your children.

How Does Child Support Work?

Child support is based on income, your custody agreement, and the child's needs. If you have primary custody, you will usually receive some amount of child support. The court will determine the exact amount of child support based on an income scale and formula.

Can I Refuse Visitation?

It’s understandable that there may be times you and your ex might not be on the best of terms, and you may want to keep your children from them. For example, if your ex isn’t paying child support, you might feel like retaliating by not allowing them visitation, but it’s important that you don’t do this. Violating a visitation order in any way, even by withholding your child from visitation once, is illegal. If you withhold visitation, you could put yourself at risk of your ex trying to take legal action and change your custody agreement. 

If your ex isn’t paying child support, there is legal action you can take rather than withhold your children to force changes in your relationship. You can go to the courts to require payments, and if that doesn’t work, the court can garnish wages or impose a jail sentence.

Contact A Child Custody Lawyer Today

There are a lot of good questions to ask a lawyer about child custody as you go through the process. This helps make sure that you’re as informed as possible and that you know what to expect from the process.

After going through this list of questions to ask a custody lawyer, the next step in a child custody battle is to contact an attorney. Working with an attorney can help make the process less stressful for you while also helping you present a better case.

Contact Campbell Law today to learn more about how we may be able to help you with your child custody case.