Legal Custody

If you are involved in a custody dispute in court, a person called a guardian ad litem (GAL) may enter your case. The Court can appoint a GAL on its own. One or both parties may request the court to appoint a GAL. The court will tend to appoint a GAL in cases where...

You do not want to your divorce to be prolonged, expensive, time consuming, and emotionally devastating. First, if you have children, it will be impossible to shield them from the divorce proceedings and the nastier they are the more the kids will be detrimentally...

If you lose your job, the first thing you should do is to call your family law lawyer. Do not delay. Why? Because you may be able to file a motion with the court to reduce your support obligation. If you are successful in getting a court to reduce your support, your...

If you are fired from your job, you can file a motion with the court asking to reduce your child support payments. Whether the court will reduce your child support depends, in part, on the reason why you were fired. If you were fired for cause or misconduct at your...

I would like to review a published case from Virginia's Court of Appeals dealing with relocation of the children out of state. The trial court and appeals court approved mother's request to move the children from Virginia to Wisconsin. In Judd v. Judd, 53 Va. App. 578...

CAN A PARENT MOVE THE CHILDREN AWAY? CAN THE OTHER PARENT STOP THE OTHER PARENT FROM MOVING THE CHILDREN AWAY? Your spouse or the other parent wants to move your children away from their current residence-to another place in Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia,...

You and your wife have children. The two of you will need to make your best efforts to try to discuss and resolve the issues relating to the children. There are many issues to discuss. I will discuss the various ways that you and your spouse can work through these...

The statute in Virginia defines sole legal custody as follows: "Sole custody" means that one person retains responsibility for the care and control of a child and has primary authority to make decisions concerning the child. Va. Code Section 124.1 Legal custody means...

JOINT LEGAL CUSTODY The Virginia statute defines joint custody as follows: Joint custody" means (i) joint legal custody where both parents retain joint responsibility for the care and control of the child and joint authority to make decisions concerning the child even...

I have discussed two types of legal custody. Recall that legal custody means which parent makes major decisions relating to the children. There is sole legal custody in which one parent makes major decisions relating to the children and the other parent has no input...