Establishing Child Custody-Winning Child Custody

Establishing child custody will come down to how you present your case in court, provided that it ends up in custody court after the parents have failed to come to an agreement.

The guiding factor in the custody court’s decision will be the “best interests of the child”. However this can be difficult to define on many occasions and the court can consider the wishes of the child if he/she is old enough.

In deciding the best interests of the child the court will assess the parents and look at their mental and physical health and will also consider who the primary care giver was for the child during the marriage.

The wishes of the child may also be considered by the court in addition to factors such as the opportunities for the child to maintain contact with the extended family of either parent, any history of alcohol or drug abuse by either or both parents, cultural factors, the child’s education and permanence in school, the age and sex of the child and other minor factors.

The primary care giver consideration has become more significant with the increasing use of psychologists in assisting the court’s decision.

Psychologists are of the view that the bond between the primary care giver and the child should be maintained to the greatest extent possible, particularly from the perspective of the child’s developmental stages, and for this reason the primary giver consideration will hold a large amount of sway.

Who Is The Primary Care Giver?

The court will make this decision based on factors such as who prepares the meals for the child on a daily basis, who is involved in helping the child with his/her school work, who arranges medical care arrangements, who buys the child’s clothes and the other crucial, day to day activities of the child’s life.

If there is no clear care giver and both parents have shared equally in these tasks, then the court will revert to what it considers to be “the best interests of the child”.

The question of who is the primary care giver is difficult decision for the court to make on occasion and at such times the court will use a table which sets out the normal day to day responsibilities with the child and this will include the health of the child, education, doctor’s visits, religious upbringing etc.

Winning child custody is not a hugely complex task but you must always keep in mind the primary consideration that the family law court will keep at it’s forefront and that is “who is the primary care giver for the child?”