Don't Wait to Gather Evidence in Your Child Custody Case

If you wait to gather your evidence & witnesses for your custody court hearing it can cause dire consequences.

You could lose parenting rights or custody of your child.

Today I want to share a piece of advice that is really very simple but is really powerful if you use it. If you are in the middle of child custody court case or think you will be in the near future, don’t just sit by and wait for something to happen. Take action now before the worst could happen.

If you do nothing, the other parent may be able to get a final order without you.

The reason I am giving you this advice is that in the last week alone, I’ve had a couple of people come and consult me and some really bad things had happened involving their families. It is because they didn’t take action until it was too late.

A man had receive paperwork from his ex-spouse and mother of his child and he claimed she was trying to terminate his parental rights. In the paperwork their were instructions to the father that he needed to respond. His response was to write a letter to the court that his rights should not be terminated and then he waited and did nothing else. He made no phone calls to the court or to his ex-wife’s attorney .

The next letter he received from the court was that his parental rights had been terminated. And now it was too late to do anything in his case. If you receive paperwork in your case you have to respond always respond in a timely manner and don’t wait for the worst to happen. Follow up directly whether it is your ex-spouse or the other divorce attorney or even with the judge in his chamber. Don’t just sit and wait because you may be hit with some really bad news and you will have no recourse..

The 2nd situation I had, was a grandmother who I consulted with about a little girl who was her granddaughter and the mother’s child. The mother had had some issues in the past, so the grandmother had guardianship of the child, and the mother had given that voluntarily. Well the mother and grandmother did not see eye to eye on a couple of things, so she was getting a little afraid that the mother of the child and the grandmother was worried that the mother was going to revoke that guardianship. So the grandmother was exploring getting third party custody rights over the minor child which is allowed in Arizona under certain circumstances.

Due to certain circumstances grandmother had to wait in this case and could not take any action as she wanted to. In the meantime what happened was the mother terminated voluntary guardianship and took back the child and now that grandmother no longer has physical custody it is going to be a lot more difficult for mother to get custody of that child.

So a lot of times things get in people’s way, it could be money or a lack of knowledge, it is important to get the knowledge you need. You owe it to your family to research, to ask questions, make phone calls, get on the internet or go to the law library. It is important that you are not on the defensive waiting for things to happen.

If money is an issue because they don’t want to do it on their own, for example, and need to hire a divorce attorney whose retainer fee is thousands of dollars. You must find a way, whether it be borrowing money or selling things, etc.

You have 2 choices: Either you can represent yourself in family court in which case you will need to prepare and gain the knowledge that you need because the judge will hold you to the standard of an attorney OR you need to get the money. Period.

But whatever you do, please don’t wait. Over the years I’ve had sad stories where people want to hire me after the decision had been made by the court and there were no appealable issues. There was no recourse left.

The time to act in when you are in the midst of a custody battle or you are going to be in a custody battle in the future. Do your research and make sure you understand the basic custody concepts so you can decide what to do.