How to Resolve a Custody Dispute
When going through a divorce, the number of decisions to make in the settlement can seem overwhelming. Once you go through the process to agree to a settlement, you expect things to run smoothly. However, should your ex-spouse refuse to adhere to the settlement, it creates an extremely frustrating situation. Child custody is one of these areas. Your ex-spouse may refuse to follow the visitation schedule, leaving you needing some sort of mediation.
When wondering how to resolve a custody dispute, the team at CLLB Law can help. We have some advice and tips for how to keep the custody dispute focused on the best interests of the children. When you’re ready to seek a legal resolution to your child custody situation, give us a call. As soon as you choose to hire us, we will begin working on your case. Contact us at 812-725-8224 today.
Best Techniques for How to Resolve a Custody Dispute
Here are some specific tips for how to resolve a custody dispute in Indiana and Kentucky.
- Understand how custody battles work: Resolving a child custody battle means negotiating a settlement agreement that serves the child’s best interests. You must be able to show why spending extra time with you will serve the children’s best interests.
- Understand what you should not do in a custody battle: Custody battles can cause a lot of hard feelings to come to the surface. You need to avoid responding to baiting in personal conversations, text messages, and social media posts. In other words, if you can’t say something nice, try not to say anything.
- Understand how a mother can lose a custody battle: When a mother loses a child custody battle, it often can involve the mother’s engaging in dangerous behavior. Proving that the mother engaged in child abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, physical abuse, or neglect could result in her losing custody.
- Understand what a high conflict custody case is: When the two spouses cannot successfully negotiate any aspects of the child custody case, this can result in a high-conflict situation. Some cases like this involve verbal and physical abuse between the spouses, creating what a judge often considers an unsafe situation for the kids.
How Do Custody Battles Work?
As part of a divorce settlement, you and your ex-spouse will set up a child parenting time and custody agreement. This will occur through negotiations or through a judge’s decree. Should your ex-spouse refuse to honor the agreement in the future, though, custody battles can arise. At this point, as your representative, we will bring the violations to the attention of your ex-spouse and negotiate a settlement. If needed, we will go to court to protect your child custody rights.
Helping you avoid significant conflicts is part of the job of our child custody lawyers. We will represent you in negotiations and in hearings. Allow us to present your wants and needs for the children in a professional manner. We can help you focus on the actual negotiations, rather than on any conflicts you have had in the past with your ex-spouse. Should things become heated, we have proven techniques available to defuse the tension.
What Should You Not Do in a Custody Battle?
Custody battles frequently come to down to things that seem small at the time. But when they come to light in a child custody hearing, these things can represent a turning point. Here are some things you can do while waiting to resolve a custody dispute.
Don’t Use Social Media Frequently
During custody disputes, it’s likely that your ex-spouse’s attorney could spend hours going through your social media history. Posts that seemed harmless at the time could look terrible during a hearing in front of a judge. If you post photos from a party you attended or a weekend getaway at a time when you should have been caring for the kids, this is damaging information. Stop posting completely or stick to a few basic informational posts that cannot harm you during a custody hearing. If you have any doubts about whether you should post something, don’t post it.
Don’t Talk About Your Ex-Spouse
Although it can be tempting to vent to others about your frustrations over your ex-spouse’s behavior, this is a poor idea. You never know who will report your criticisms back to your ex-spouse. This includes your children, who may misunderstand something you say, leading to significant problems. You may find the other side using this information against you in a hearing. No matter how innocent you may think a certain comment is, when presented in a child custody hearing, it can be extremely damaging.
Don’t Give Up Chances to Care for the Kids
When you have parenting time set with the children, make sure you follow through on it. Don’t send the kids to a grandparent’s house when it’s your turn to care for them. Don’t ask your ex-spouse to take over your time with the children. Routinely skipping your turns to care for the children can hurt you significantly in a child custody hearing.
How Can a Mother Lose a Custody Battle?
Indiana courts consider both mothers and fathers important to the children’s well-being. The courts also know the importance of helping children maintain their normal life as much as possible after the divorce. If the mother was the primary caregiver before the divorce, there is a high probability the court will give her primary physical custody.
However, the mother doesn’t receive this type of favorable ruling automatically. In fact, if the mother engages in dangerous behavior around the kids, she may lose all custody rights. If your ex-spouse engages in alcohol use, drug use, gambling, physical outbursts, or verbal abuse, the children could be in danger with her. Count on our team to introduce these items in the child custody hearing. We know how important it is to keep children safe after a divorce, and child custody decisions play a big role in that.
What Is a High-Conflict Custody Case?
High-conflict child custody cases are those that involve uncivil behavior from one or both spouses. You may not intend for the child custody hearing to involve conflicts, but the emotions can ramp up quickly. Heated arguments from the past can reignite.
When the two spouses cannot communicate effectively because of hard feelings, this complicates the custody case. It’s difficult for the spouses to negotiate effectively and explain exactly what they want for the kids when they spend the entire time arguing with each other.
Our Child Custody Lawyers Can Defuse the Emotions
One advantage of hiring our team at Church, Langdon, Lopp, Banet Law to represent you is that we can keep the emotions in check. With representatives from both sides handling the majority of the negotiations, we often find the spouses involved behave more civilly to each other.
Should the negotiations become contentious, we have multiple techniques we can use to defuse the situation. We know the importance of communication in child custody hearings. We also will help you keep your cool in the negotiations when your spouse tries to provoke you into an unwanted verbal conflict. Behaving calmly during hearings can give you a better chance to impress the judge in a custody case.
How to Win a Custody Battle
Beyond the specific situations we mentioned earlier regarding child custody situations, here are a few general tips to follow. These can help you avoid causing problems for yourself when working through the custody dispute process.
Secure Your Electronics
If your ex-spouse knows your passwords and passcodes for computers, smartphones, tablets, email, and social media accounts, change the passwords. Your ex-spouse could find information that will work against you in hearings. Or your ex-spouse could create fake information in your accounts that will be difficult to disprove.
Have Witnesses Available
The best advice for avoiding conflict is to avoid communicating with your ex-spouse. Obviously, when trying to coordinate parenting time and dropping off the kids, this is nearly impossible. Instead, only communicate with your ex-spouse through text or email, so there’s always a trail of the communication. There are also apps available that keep an accurate record of your communication for automatic admission in court if necessary. If you must speak to your ex-spouse in person or on the phone, try to always have a witness with you.
Track Your Interactions with the Kids
Keep a list of the ways you care for your kids each time you see them. Having specific items that you can show the court about your parenting skills will be helpful in winning your case. Should your spouse be failing to adhere to parenting time rules and other items, having a written list of each violation is extremely helpful, too.
Let Us Help You Learn How to Resolve a Custody Dispute
Going through a divorce settlement often brings up stressful situations from the past. Rehashing previous arguments brings hard feelings to the forefront, opening old wounds. When you and your spouse disagreed on the best path forward during the marriage, those disagreements can become even harsher after the marriage ends. Our divorce lawyers understand the stress that this process causes.
Child custody disagreements are among the most difficult to resolve amicably after a divorce. Trying to decide what’s best for the kids can create conflicts during and after the marriage. Some people respond to these disagreements by violating the child custody setup they agreed to in the original settlement. When your ex-spouse is not sharing custody as agreed, our child custody team is ready to help you receive fair treatment.
Call Us for Help With Your Child Custody Case Today
Church, Langdon, Lopp, Banet Law will always have your and your children’s best interests at heart. We do not back down when your ex-spouse’s attorneys try to introduce untruths into the case. You deserve to have fair treatment from your ex-spouse. Call us as soon as possible to discuss your case at 812-725-8224.
