Don't Let Setbacks in Your Custody Case Get You Down

Setbacks are just a part of life. Everyone will experience setbacks in their life. That includes judges, attorneys, you, the other side in your custody case. I wanted to cover this topic because of a very difficult and challenging case that I experienced.

In this case the father was my client and his ex had taken off with their child and they had shared custody. He eventually was reunited with his child after not knowing where his child was for 3-weeks.

Over those 3-weeks we filed motions with the court trying to get some sort of relief or orders that the child be returned to my client immediately. The problem was we did not know where my client's ex was, so we weren't able to serve her with paperwork.

At one point we had tracked her down to Aruba from her Instagram account but there were no pictures of the child so we did not know where the child was either. It felt like a roller coaster especially with the filing of all these different motions. And when the judge would make these orders, we weren't getting exactly what we wanted. Maybe it was because we weren't asking clearly enough.

Things just not seem like they were turning out right. And day by day my client was getting more frantic and discouraged and worried about the safety of his son. As as I was responsible for leading him through the court system, I was starting to feel the same panic.

My client had 2 private investigators on the case to find his son and we had a lot of challenges. Not only were we dealing with not getting what we were asking for, we were dealing with difficult court personnel. Personnel who were probably overworked and overburdened, getting lots of calls and just not wanting to deal with them.

We dealt with a situation where once the judge signed an order that we really wanted it got lost in the system due to red tape and it just couldn't be tracked down. So we were unable to get the certified copies that we needed so the police or law enforcement could go and get the child.

This caused a delay of about a day after the judge signed the order that we wanted. At that point we believed that the child may have been moved from one location to the other and we would have to start all over again as far as trying to find him.

It was a very scary situation. There were a lot of setbacks in this case and it would have been very easy to just give up but I don't think there was any way that my client would have done that. So, I want you to know that there are things that are going to happen in your case.

But you need to make a decision of whether you are going to let those things knock you down forever or whether you are going to get back up. It's ok after a setback to take a minute and take a break or cry or whatever you need to do, but then to get back on the horse.

It is like your child is on the top of Mount Everest and needs to be saved. You can bet if it was my child on top of Mt. Everest I would be at the base getting ready to go up no matter how many times I knew that i was going to fall, I would be on my way to save my child's life.

If you are in this situation know that your child's life hangs in the balance and no matter what how many times you fall you have to get back up. You have to climb that mountain. So, don't let setbacks knock you down.

Wendy Hernandez is a family law attorney in Phoenix, AZ and founder of Command the Courtroom which teaches you how to handle yourself in court and achieve the best outcome when representing yourself in your divorce or child custody case.