Have you ever heard the term “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”? This is especially true when you are in the courtroom. When you go to trial on your child custody case, your support case or your divorce case, that is the time to pull out all of the stops. That means bringing all of your evidence in support of your case to the courtroom and bringing as many witnesses as you can that are going to be helpful and not cumulative to the presentation of evidence.

It’s not good if you go to court and are trying to prove a point to the judge “I have that evidence but it’s at home in my filing cabinet or such and such witness couldn’t come to testify”. It doesn’t work. If you have evidence or witnesses and they are not there at the time of the trial the judge is not going to consider that information.

This is something that I share in one of my courses, but I’m bringing this up now because I’ve had a bunch of trials the...

In this week’s video I want to talk to you about taking baby steps as you proceed through your child custody case.  Often times, and it is usually fathers, tell me that they are not getting enough time with their children.  They want equal time with their children and to have as much time with their children as the mother has. In many cases the father may not be getting any time at all or sometimes just minimal time. 

It’s almost always my philosophy to try to work things out outside the court. In cases where the other party is adamant that they will not agree to equal parenting time, I often talk to my client, usually the father usually about considering taking less time as the case is proceeding to get to where he wants to be eventually. Because in my mind some time is better than no time

I've been in the position where I get to trial and both parties have dug their heels in and for example my client the father has not wanted to accept any time. He just...

I want to talk to you about undoing a child custody order that you had no knowledge about. In past videos I’ve talked about the importance of giving a party notice when you are filing an action in court or when you are asking the court to do something. You can give a party notice by serving them with the paperwork and depending on where you live, there are different ways that you can serve a party.

You can serve them by way of process server, you can have them accept service, or in many cases you can serve them with certified mail return receipt requested. But there are going to be cases where service or notice slips through the cracks.

There is actually someone really close to me in my life that had a case where his children’s names were changed while he was living in another country. He never received notice that this action was pending.

What should you do if this happens to you?

The first thing you should do is go to the Rules of Procedure wherever you live. If you...

Today I want to talk with you about an argument that comes up a lot in child custody cases especially when parties have been living together and sharing child custody for a significant period of time.

What I often hear is that one parent or the other was the primary caretaker of the kids and that the other parent really wasn't all that involved in their school, or extracurricular activities or maybe taking them to the doctor. So the argument that the parent who says they were the primary caretaker is that they should continue to be the primary caretaker because the children are used to them being around all the time.

The person who was not involved as much in the children's day to day life is now saying, that that is not really fair because circumstances have changed. I'm not in a position where I'm going to come home every night to see the kids even though I'm not the one giving them the nightly baths or doing the nightly homework.

So, I do want equal parenting time and more time...

I want to give you a tip about reading your minutes from your child custody court hearing very carefully. The minutes from court are like minutes from a meeting. If you were ever in student council as a kid there's a secretary who would take minutes.

In the courtroom there is usually some sort of assistant who takes down the minutes. In Arizona that person is called a judicial assistant and he or she takes minutes of everything that is happening in the courtroom. Then after a court hearing, usually within a few days we will get those minutes from the court.

These minutes in my jurisdiction are called minute entries, although in some jurisdictions they may just call them minutes. Your minute entries are going to contain information that is very important to your case. They will contain deadlines that you are going to have to meet, future court dates, requirements for getting your case ready for court and other miscellaneous requirements. I bring this up because in a recent case...

What happens in child custody if a mother is breastfeeding? Does the father get any parenting time at all? If so, how much?

As I've said in many of these videos the answer to the question is it depends on a lot. If you're a fit parent or a fit father, you don't have any mental or emotional issues you should be getting parenting time with your infant child for sure. There’s tons of studies on the importance of a child bonding not only with mother but also with the father during the early months and years of their lives. So there's a lot of support for you getting time with your child.

The question is how much and how often are you getting that time if the mother of the child is breastfeeding?

According to June 6, 2018 court papers in the Angelina Jolie/ Brad Pitt custody battle it appears that the children are being closed down to a relationship to their father. This can be considered parental alienation.

The June 6th Court papers obtained by People Magazine states:

"The children not having a relationship with their father is harmful to them and that Jolie could be in danger of losing full custody if the minor children remain closed down to their father."

I would categorize this divorce as a high-conflict divorce and the custody battle seems to be heating up.

I have seen in my custody cases that many times one of the parents will not promote and at worse still discourage the children from seeing the other parent. This is called parental alienation and is quite common especially in bitter custody battles.

In your child custody trial preparations you must file a pretrial statement to the judge in your case.

Your pretrial statement is a statement to the judge where you tell the judge what it is that you're asking for at trial.

This is an important part of your child custody trial preparation. In different states and countries different judges have different rules about what's required in your pretrial statement.

I want to talk with you about considering actions or behavior of the other party when you are making decisions in your custody case.

Within the last few days I met with a potential client and he and his ex entered into an agreement for joint custody and equal parenting time just a few months ago.

However this potential client was upset because the other parent wasn't following their agreements and so he wanted to change custody and parenting time.

There were problems with because one, they had just entered into an agreement a few months ago. But another reason he wanted to change the current arrangement that he agreed to was because he said the other party had done certain things that affected the safety and well-being of their children.

When he named off those things to me I was quite surprised and thought this could make a difference in a custody or parenting time case. It could sway the judge one way or the other. I asked him when did these things happen and when did you find...

I want to talk to you about something that's closely related to one of the videos I've done in the last couple weeks about providing notice.   If you haven't watched that video already, go back and take a look at it just.   To briefly summarize in the video I tell you that you have to put the other party on notice of all the claims that you're making in your case. So related to that I want to talk about the pretrial statement. Your pretrial statement is a statement to the judge where you tell the judge what it is that you're asking for at trial. I imagine that in different states and countries different judges have different rules about what's required in your pretrial statement. In Arizona the judges require us and the rules require us to include information about the uncontested issues.   That means issues that parties don't necessarily disagree on in fact. Those are issues that the parties might actually agree upon.

We also have to include...