Modifiction of Custody? Maybe yes, maybe not...........

The smart way to modify custody

| Uncategorized https://la-family-law.com/the-smart-way-to-modify-custody/

Regardless of whether you have to show best interest of the child or a change of circumstance to modify a particular custody order, what I have found to be most effective and successful  way to modify custody is to use, what I call, the incremental approach.   Rather then request a significant change in the child sharing arrangement(i.e. alt. weekends and every Wednesday overnight to alt. weeks) you  request something  that is a natural outgrowth  from the existing order—using the above example, you would request moving the every Wednesday overnights to Thursday and a Monday overnight tacked on to your weekend. 

As such, on your weekend you would have the child Thursday to Tuesday morning and every Thursday.  This request is child focused in that the change is not that different from the schedule the child is used to and doesn’t require the Court to make a radical change/modification.  Plus, it gives you the added benefit of having a success in court— so that in the future, when  you want to get more time the other side will recall how the court viewed your past request as reasonable, and they may approach your new request  with more openness.

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Attorney blogger note: this may be the case if you don't do it too many times. However, I have seen clients do this routinely as often as possible with the obvious intention of moving away or some other drastic eventual goal. The key is to know why the spouse is really doing it rather than what it LOOKS like they claim they are doing. I have often seen (in my experience) that attorneys who bill high fees tend to engage in this type of strategy.

In some high conflict cases, every single visitation requires interference with the other attorney because the other attorney writes a letter for every visitation (I call that bill padding myself, but whatever)... I personally discourage constant interference by attorneys because it perpetuates the inability of the parents to function normally.  I also note that the article above calls it modify incrementally--and it IS CUSTODY--not visitation. 

In the above example, one parent is trying to gain far more than 50% custody, or already has it. VISITATION, on the other hand, is more likely to try and be increased by one parent, and custody change usually requires something more [than plain visitation would], as visitation is normally encouraged, but change of custody not necessarily. I don't believe in a strategy of sneaking up to do something in most cases, but every attorney may have his own method.