Winning Strategies for Custody Cases

[livednlearned]

I found this document online and thought it might be useful for people going through the custody stuff, especially if you're at the beginning.

www.dmqlaw.com/articles/WinningStrategies.pdf

Some of the advice you see here all the time. Like this:

Any temporary custody hearing should be taken as extremely serious and should be prepared for in the same fashion as if it were the final trial, for as a practical matter it may be.  Some judges will take a position at a final trial that the only real evidence they wish to consider is what has taken place since their determination at the temporary hearing. So therefore the playing field may not be level at the final trial. Thus, a temporary hearing is so significant, it must be considered carefully whether to ask for one or not... .The temporary hearing must be treated as if it were the final trial, even though some evidence may not have been fully obtained and thorough investigations may not be

complete.

Adultery seems to come up a lot here, too. There's a section on Adultery that is also very useful -- what parts of the adultery situation could be useful for the court, etc. Helpful whether it is your spouse or you who has to worry about the affair and how it might affect custody.

It's not necessarily tailored toward high-conflict cases, but many of us know that contested custody cases involve disordered spouses.

[livednlearned]

Also -- very interesting what the author writes about settlement. Touchy subject for us! You can see how determined Ls are to focus on settling the issues instead of litigating them in court. Arguably, for good cause -- they know that trial will be extremely stressful, not only for their client, but potentially for the kids as well. But it's good to understand how Ls think about settling and mediation, and how you think about it as a part of your strategy.

[Herculite]

Thanks for the reference Livednlearned.

I'm in Australia, so the particular laws are unlikely to apply here, but I'm at the point of schooling up on anything useful right now.

I've only just started separation proceedings with my STBXW, but already she's refusing to sign a standard and fair custody arrangement.

[livednlearned]

Thanks for the reference Livednlearned.

I'm in Australia, so the particular laws are unlikely to apply here, but I'm at the point of schooling up on anything useful right now.

I've only just started separation proceedings with my STBXW, but already she's refusing to sign a standard and fair custody arrangement.

This doc is for lawyers in Georgia, so even in the US the specifics are different. But I think it's interesting to compare how an L thinks about a winning strategy with what many of us suggest here.

I realized that my L did a lot of things that match what the L in this doc advises.