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Single Parents
custody laws/advice
I believe this is
1. one of the most important things for a single parent to have access to and as much understanding of as possible. We need to know our rights: what we can do, what we can lose, what we can choose, how things could happen. There's so much headache, and being prepared is pretty important.
2. the most anxiety-inducing subject I've dealt with yet
3. one of the hardest topics to get detailed, understandable information on. No one's situations are the same, and it's easy to find laws usually, but not easy to gain the peace of mind that understanding those laws will bring. I just spent 8 hours frantically searching custody lawyers, legal hotlines, birth certificate circumstances, etc. just trying to find an answer to put me at ease. Still not at ease, as the hospital can give you some answers, but I think there's certain things they're not exactly allowed to say, and it'd be nice if someone would just say them, plain and simple.
4. scary as hell when most of the information I found was geared towards fathers attempting to gain custody. What about me? The mother who's being threatened with court and a custody battle while trying to battle a pregnancy on her own? I certainly did not carry a child for 9 months and live through delivery to allow my baby boy to be taken from me, especially by a man who felt his time was better spent in jail and with other women after finding out about this baby.
Any ideas or suggestions for the single mothers who are scared sh!tless? I can't be the only one fighting...
This discussion has been closed.
Re: custody laws/advice
first step = relax, breathe, and breathe again
second = contact a lawyer if you can afford one, otherwise just research and do your homework to have as much information as possible. Unless you are being a bad mother, the odds of your child being taken away from you are slim to none. That said, it is likely that unless you have a valid reason (legal reason) to object to it, the father will likely be allowed time with the child.
Know the laws in your state; research, and you can always ask for help (legal information, not advice) from your local family court services.
I think you shouldn't be so worried. Meet with a lawyer. If you are a good mother without any criminal history or anything like that you should be able to maintain primary physical custody of your child. I have even heard of mothers with substance abuse issues being able to keep primary custody if they go to treatment. If the dad fights for it in court he will probably be awarded visitation. But with a good lawyer you should be able to keep the visitation to a minimum. With a newborn especially if you are breastfeeding you can ask for only a few hours of visitation here and there. No overnights. Under the right circumstances you could put off overnights until your child is 3 or older.
Good news is you should be able to get child support if he files for visitation rights. It is hard to realize it now but it is really probably in your child's best interest for them to have a relationship with the father. Plus you may actually enjoy the free time. Taking care of a child is not easy and you will need all the help you can get. Say for example your child is with the father every other saturday. That gives you some free time on the weekend to get your shopping and done or just relax and do something for yourself. I personally look at it as free babysitting.
If I could do it all over again I probably would try to limit the time my son is with his dad. But to avoid going to court I voluntarily gave his dad about 30% time. My son is three and he is with his dad every other Thurs-Sunday morning. It is about 7 days a month. However when he starts school the time will most like be reduced to every other weekend because we live about 2 hours away from eachother so he won't be able to get him during week days anymore.
It is hard at first but you will get through it. Of course everything I have stated is based on the dad being a decent guy. If he has any history of abuse or anything like that or you fear for your child's well being then you could probably fight to get only supervised visitation.
We ended up doing everything so far through court mediation which is free. When you file a case in family court they require you to try to come to agreements through mediation before going to a judge. The only thing we did have a judge rule on was the child support amounts. My ex didn't want to give me the amount of child support the state's child support worksheet allowed me so I had to go in front of a judge and get a court order for him to pay the correct amount.
I broke up with my FI when my son with 1.5 years old and we lived together and BD was on the birth certificate. So my situation was different. But when I moved out I had to immediately get a temporary court order to state that I was the primary custodial parent. If I had not done that then BD could have gone to court first and filed for himself to be the primary custodial parent. When I decided to leave it was basically like a game of chess.
I had to make sure and get all my ducks in a row. If he had filed for temp. custody before me then he may have been able to keep my son at his house and kept me from him until we saw a judge which could have been weeks or even a month or longer. I was kind enough not to keep my son from him. My lawyer contacted him and told him that he could not see my son until we had a written agreement in place. Within about 3 days of me moving out we had a temporary written signed agreement that he would get my son for short visits a couple of times a week. It stipulated the drop off and return times and places and was signed by a judge before I would hand over my son to him.