What Parents Should Know Before Seeking Custody Modifications

When you divorce, you can take solace that you are no longer in a trouble marriage, but if you have children together, you are forever linked as parents. This unfortunately may mean that the co-parenting issues you had during your marriage may not dissolve like the bonds of matrimony. This may compel frustrated parent to seek court intervention.

However, before filing a motion to modify custody or parenting time, it is critical for parents to understand that a family court judge may not be ready to get involved with certain issues between warring parents. This post will identify a few of them.

Differences in religious practices – If one parent insists that the children should be exposed to a particular religion and the other parent is diametrically opposed to it, courts are very reluctant to issue rulings that may favor one parent’s religious beliefs over the other.

Care by significant others – Additionally, courts generally will not intervene if a parent’s girlfriend or boyfriend cares for the children when the parent is at work (or is running errands). Indeed, new love interests who are introduced to children may be cause for concern, but every situation is different.

Entertainment choices – If you only let the kids watch TV sparingly, and the other parent lets them television whenever they want, it is unlikely that a court will intervene to make decisions over entertainment choice disputes.  There’s an expectation that parents will respect their respective entertainment choices for the kids.

If you have questions about custody and parenting time modifications, an experienced family law attorney can help.