Never Give Up in Your Child Custody Fight

Never give up the fight in your child custody case even if you feel your case is hopeless.

2 real cases where my clients had given up hope but we ended up winning the battle.

You may feel hopeless because you think your spouse has the upper hand and you may just feel like giving up. In the course of my practice I have had a lot of clients tell me that it’s not worth it, it’s too expensive, it’s too stressful and they want to give up.

However in every case after I have talked to my clients & stressed how important it is to have rights to have their child in their lives, not one of them chose to give up and kept fighting.
This week I have gotten a few emails from my viewers. In one email the mother was feeling very discouraged. She had downloaded my best interest checklist at and after reviewing all the best interest factors she came to the conclusion that she was basically ‘screwed’ in her custody case and the father was going to get everything he wanted.

In the other email a father was upset because the mother had severely beaten their daughter & despite that fact the court allowed the mother to have temporary custody of the child pending the trial. Please remember in a family law case especially when there is child involved, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Hopefully in your case, it will take you only weeks or a month to get where you need to be with your children. However in some cases it may take years to get where you need to be with your child. The question then you must ask yourself is how important are my children to me? How much do they need me and how much do I want them in my lives?

I have 2 actual cases where my clients felt hopeless but because they decided to press forward, things turned out to be ok. In one case I had a woman who had suffered domestic violence at the hands of her husband, kicked out of her house and she was representing herself in court without an attorney. At the temporary hearing the judge did not give her any time at all with her daughter. The woman eventually became my client and she did have some serious mental health problems including PTSD, a history of drug abuse and was sporatically employed.

I took her case Pro-Bono which means free. We started tackling these issues, one step at a time and we slowly made progress. We got her help through the State so she could start treatment on her drug & mental health issues. She started seeing a psychiatrist, was diligent about taking medication and not missing any appointments. She entered and completed a drug rehab program and got off drugs and she tested for drugs for the court on a weekly basis. Fast forward to almost a year later:

My client now has joint custody of her daughter with her ex-husband and she also has unsupervised parenting time. That is a huge leap from where she was a year ago when she came to see me. Her ultimate goal is to have equal parenting time but she is not there yet but she has started and she is showing the judge that she is working on her issues and at some point the judge is going to give her equal parenting time.

The other situation was a case I just went to trial with recently where the other part was asking for sole custody of the daughter. My client was seeking joint custody but the other side wanted my client to only have supervised monitored access with the child. The judge wanted to see all of use before the court hearing started so he could get his impressions of the case. I knew walking into this meeting with the judge it was not going to go our way. In addition we were asking that the child be moved to another state

At the time when we went into trial my client was not getting any time with her daughter. I talked to the judge about what was going on with the case as it was pending & had been going on for more than a year. There was a therapist that was involved and she was aligning with the father and her recommendations were biased as she was only getting information from the father. She was refusing to see my client and refusing to listen to what my client had to say. The judge was skeptical but I assured the judge that when we came to court we would present evidence that will prove the bias of the therapist was depriving my client of a relationship with her daughter. We went to court & we were able to prove our case. The judge ruled that my client would get joint decision making & she now has unrestricted access with her child. The judge did not order that the child could move, but it was a success because she now has access to her child when before she didn’t have any.