Hi, I'm Dave Ward with The Ward Law Firm. And one of the questions that we seem to get quite a bit both from our website and from people that come in to see us is; ”What can a court consider when it's making determinations about custodial rights?” ”Who's going to be the primary custodian of a child?” ”How visitation works?” Those kinds of things.
Well, the truth is when a child is involved the court really has a lot of discretion to consider anything that it thinks is relevant to the question that's being asked with regard to the child. However, the legislature has set out about 17 different areas that a court can look to in trying to make that determination.
Now again, these are non-exclusive areas meaning that they're not limited to this. This is just sort of a guideline for things that the court can look at and they include things like; who has been the primary caregiver of the child over the course of the child's life? Where has the child lived? Does the child have siblings that they have a close and continuing relationship with? Is there a situation where one of the parents is in a situation where their job has greater flexibility to meet the needs of a child of a particular age? As I said, there are a number of factors that a court can consider.
If you'd like to get a list of those factors you can contact us on our website and we'd be happy to send you the list of those factors. If you have a question about custody, any of these factors or anything else related to your case, give us a call. I'm Dave Ward with The Ward Law Firm and we help parents protect those things that matter most.