Child Custody Agreements: Steps to Create Your Custody Schedule

By Dianna Nelsun

A child custody agreement is the document that both parents agree on that outlines the terms of who the child will live with, when the child will visit the other parent and any other information about raising the children that the parents want included. Once a custody agreement has been decided, the parents can go to court and the court will adopt it into a court order. If an agreement can't be reached between the parents, the court will make the decisions about the agreement and then make it into the order.

Parents are usually better off if they can reach an agreement before going to court. This is because if both parents agree on the terms of custody and visitation they will be more likely to live by those terms. And, both parents will be happy with the results.

One of the most important things in the custody agreement is the custody and visitation schedule. Once parents have this figured out the rest is pretty easy. Here is the basic outline of how to figure out the schedule.

First, decide on how you will divide up custody and figure it out in terms of a rotating schedule. For example, if the parents decide they will split custody evenly figure out how that will be done. Maybe the parents will rotate weeks, or maybe only parent will have the children on weekdays and the other parent will have weekends and a few visits.

Come up with the schedule for custody and then map it out on a calendar. For example, say you come up with the outline that the child spends the weekdays with one parent and the weekends with the other. Block out the time on a calendar so you can see what it actually looks like.

The next step is to figure out the holiday and vacation schedule. Write out a list of the holidays and divide them between the parents. Make sure both parents have the same number of big and small holidays.

Then decide on the vacation time you want to allot to each parent. For example, you can include a clause that says each parent can take the children on vacation for two seven day periods in the year. Or you can actually specify dates when the parents will have vacation time.

It is helpful to write out the holidays and the division of custody in a table and then go through and add them in your calendar. You can also write in the dates of vacation if they are known, or put in your unspecified vacation. It's nice to have the information in two different formats.

The last things to add are the special events. You'll want to put in one time events, like a parent's or child's birthday, and any recurring special events, like baseball games during the season. Basically, special events are any times the custody situation may change because of other events going on. Put them on the calendar and write them out in a list.

All of this may seem time consuming and tedious--but it is worth it to get the custody agreement you want. You may want to investigate the various custody software programs available. There are some that let you create you custody and visitation schedule very easy. This can be helpful; especially if you need to create multiple schedules so you and the child's other parent can agree.

If you do all of this work it will be easier for you and the child's other parent to agree on custody and visitation. You can both work together to create and modify a schedule that works for you and that you're both happy with. Then you can be satisfied knowing the court will accept your agreement.

About the Author:

Learn more information about child custody agreements and find out how to create your personalized custody agreement with the software Custody X Change.

Child Custody: Three Hints to Help You

By Dianna Nelsun

You're going through a divorce and you're trying to figure out your child custody situation. Where do you start? How do you get through all of the information that you need to? What are the best solutions for your child?

Take heart. There is a way to get through all of this. If you are willing to put in the time and the effort then you will figure out how to manage your custody situation and help your child through it too. Here are three ideas of how to do this.

1. Put your child's needs first. It can be difficult for a divorcing parent to put aside their own emotions and focus on doing what is best for the child. When creating your custody agreement, don't base your decisions on what you want or on revenge for the child's other parent. Try to be objective and think about your children first.

You know your child the best, and your child and custody situation are unique. You need to figure out the solutions that will work for you. Don't worry about appearing unconventional; adopt any method that helps you and your child.

2. Be flexible your custody and visitation schedule. Of course parents want to have the most time they can with their child. And, they should try to get as much time as possible. However, they need to remember that they are sharing the time with the other parent who also wants as much time as possible.

You can make a custody schedule that is fair to both parents. Base the custody and visitation times on what is best for your child. There are many options available and you can experiment with some of them to find out what works best.

3. Seek out resources. There are a lot of ways for you to get help during this. You can always talk to a lawyer, get information from the courthouse or online, download a custody software to help you make a schedule, go to a support group or try to mediation. Explore your options.

These ideas can help give you encouragement as you manage your situation. Try to remain positive and help your child remain positive as well. Once you get everything settled, you can relax and enjoy your time as a parent.

About the Author:

Get more information about child custody and learn how the program Custody X Change can help you make your perfect child custody and visitation schedule.

What Everybody Ought to Know About Divorce?

By Dennis Gac

An epidemic has been slowly gathering momentum for the last many decades. Over the last two centuries, the world has undergone such changes that our forefathers couldn't even imagine of. Due to globalization, the world is becoming increasingly smaller as barriers break between different cultures. Science and technology has surpassed the wildest limits of human imagination. However, man has to pay a very dear price for such glory. Human relationships, which are the basis of all existence, are breaking down. Today's times are being marked for the increasing shallowness of relationships.

Broken homes no longer excite any surprise as the word "divorce" becomes a term of everyday use. With an increased demand for professional marriage counselors, people are flocking to whoever is available, for solutions. The scenario is extremely chaotic as one may imagine. Broken relationships and custody battles over children are occurrences that man has learnt to take in his stride. As behind every other phenomenon, causes abound here as well. For all the hype and glory surrounding globalization, one is really led to wonder about what interconnectedness it has achieved.

Man seems to be becoming more of an escapist with the lapse of time. Couples are unwilling to take the time and effort to solve matters and save a marriage. The only exit route is a divorce. One leads to another and so we have this new wave of emulation where one divorce encourages other couples to even consider it and keep it at the back of their minds. We have deliberately limited our options, to such a level that nothing other than divorce can make sense of a happy marriage. Our minds shut down and refuse to look beyond it. In short we have cut down our cognitive powers to almost a standstill.

This is a psychological phenomenon of close ended thinking. Our thinking processes become absolutely stationary and no other options but the one present in front of our eyes exist. We do not even bother to reflect and look for other solutions before calling up our lawyers to draw up divorce papers. Parting ways seem to be the only thing to do today. People are getting divorces for the pettiest of reasons, and that too just because everyone is too selfish and egoistic to make the first move in working things out.

The social and the psychological side effects of divorce are immense. Not only are the two people involved, it becomes worse if there are children as well. These kids grow up watching their parents fight out bitter battles in the divorce courts, slinging bitter abuses and allegations at each other. These children with such a traumatic background grow up to be repressed individuals with a variety of social, mental and physical problems. Also it sets a trend for the future generations to come, for whom divorces are the best options available. It takes only a minor misunderstanding or a petty fight for a couple to start off divorce proceedings. True commitment doesn't let go so easily. Divorce is an alarming phenomenon that has arrived as emotional baggage in the advanced lifestyle of modern man.

About the Author:

Dennis Gac represents Father Rights Organization which helps fathers to regain their children's back into their custody. If you wish to know more about father rights just visit the website http://www.fathershelphotonline.com and more information about father rights.

Know More About Parental Alienation

By Dennis Gac

Parental alienation is just another one of the numerous reasons why the problem of divorce has grown so serious in contemporary society today. In medical terms it is termed as PAS or Parental Alienation Syndrome. This is yet another of the side effects that bitter divorce proceeding usually has on the minds of impressionable children. A man called Richard Gardner in 1985 coined this term. He used the term to describe a process of increasing alienation or distance between a child and his/her parents. In such situations a child displays an increasing amount of hostility and a critical attitude towards the other parent. Now this syndrome can occur for a variety of reasons. One of the main ones is because the other parent usually indoctrinates the child to indulge in such behavior. Now the other parent can either directly or indirectly encourage this attitude of parental alienation.

Again, some numbers which have been thrown up by Gardner reveals that the alienator in parental alienation syndrome cases is more often than not, the mother. The fathers are usually accused of different crimes by the mothers and these accusations all directly or indirectly influence the attitude of the child towards the targeted parent, regardless of whether the accusations are true or not. Parental Alienation has become a favorite tool used by couples to win custody cases. However to be fair, it has been noticed that of late, men are also playing an equal role in alienating children from their mothers.

For quite a long time, Parental Alienation Syndrome had not been accepted as a valid point in custody cases. However, of late, courts in the United States have accepted it while in the United Kingdom, it still awaits recognition. However, there is still a great deal of controversy about the existence and scientific validity of the Parental Alienation Syndrome. It has been widely criticized universally. Even the APA or the American Psychological Association has been very cautious about adopting any stance on the issue of parental alienation as a valid psychological condition. The Association has often criticized the misuse of the syndrome as well.

At this point we are really not qualified to comment on the nature of the Parental Alienation Syndrome. However it is true that one bitter spouse to indict another often uses it. Children as usual, are the worst affected, as they fluctuate back and forth between both parents without really knowing what is happening. Again, the mothers are still discriminated against, as being the perpetrators of PAS. They are often accused of unjustly accusing the fathers to get the child on their side. The male parents often end up with a raw deal, especially if sexual allegations are made against them.

Though it is true sometimes, at other moments, they are just an expression of hate and revenge. For this dicey nature perhaps, PAS is still being denied any official validity. The fate of this still remains to be seen and as always, nothing but time will tell.

About the Author:

Dennis Gac represents Father Rights Organization which helps fathers to regain their children's back into their custody. If you wish to know more about father rights just visit the website http://www.fathershelphotonline.com and more information about father rights.

Get Your Divorce Questions Answered

By Dennis Gac

The world has begun to grow extremely selfish these days. People do not think twice before contriving ways and means to destroy their elements of hate. Even their loved ones are not spared in this game of hate where they are used as pawns to win against enemies. It is more upsetting to see this being enacted between separated couples who blame each other for almost everything to let out their anger, frustration and hatred.

Mothers and fathers do not hesitate to make their children the centerpieces of such dirty mind games that they play against each other. To get what things that they want, like custody for example, mothers fling false allegations of child sexual abuse at the fathers. To counter it, men often come up with allegations of infidelity and the like. The worst thing about false allegations is, it is very difficult to prove them either wrong or right. The process of authenticating such claims often takes months and often years of legal procedure.

There are certain developments in judicial history that led to these eventualities. False allegations were encouraged after the passing of the Mondale Act of 1974 or the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). This Act was designed with the intention of investigation and subsequent validation of child abuse claims. People looking for revenge were eager to use this as a tool to hurl false allegations at each other. Now, this does not mean to imply, that, during divorce proceedings all claims made a re deliberately untrue.

Instead, it is definitely true though a lot of these accusations do hold ground; a lot of them are made for the sake of it. Unfortunately, the fathers have to bear the bigger brunt in these cases. Using the maternal complex to win over juries, mothers have often made false allegations against the fathers, concerning alcoholism, sexual and physical abuse and so on. Under therefore mentioned Act, CPS workers are entrusted with the task of evaluating and proving such claims, and often professional pressure and fear of erroneous consequences have led them to pass biased decisions.

Two symptoms have been identified in false allegations being used in divorce proceedings. Firstly, the Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) in which the child is alienated from one parent by the other. Secondly, the Sexual Allegation In Divorce (SAID) whose consequences are highly erroneous. In this kind of a false allegation, one parent is accused by the other parent of sexually molesting the child. Quite obviously, it is the father who suffers the social outrage because in our society sexual molestation is considered to be one of the most severe and unforgiving crimes. Amidst all this mudslinging due to false allegations, it is the child who suffers most and eventually grows up as a traumatized individual with psychological ailments. The saddest part is that, caught up in their own little worlds, people forget the fact that they are stooping as low as using their own children to be the puppets in their dirty little games.

About the Author:

Dennis Gac is the founder and President of National Brotherhood of Father Rights. http://www.fathershelphotonline.com offers a membership organization which gives Fathers unlimited consultation for a period of one year and that can guide Fathers throughout their entire court cases.

Get To Know How Deal with Child Custody

By Dennis Gac

One of the saddest points in a divorce is having to battle over child custody. That is, parents fighting over who gets the lion's share of the child's attention and affection? Living in a time when every second couple we know is getting divorced, these custody battles are usually a very familiar sight. These battles revolve around visiting rights, who gets to stay with the child and who becomes the visitor and so on. It is usually a very distressing deal for the parent who loses the battle and has to adopt the role of an occasional passer by in the life of his own child. It has been seen however, that over time, the concept of child custody, or rather, certain ideas about it have undergone a sea change.

The idea of child custody, just like many other issues, had patriarchal overtones to it right up to the middle of the19th century. It was universally believed then that only fathers could be a true parent to a child. This view could not, probably, be countered, because the impression of women being the quintessential "single mothers" had not yet emerged. But with the turn of the century, common perceptions changed, thanks to the intense female empowerment and emancipation movements. Soon, with fathers spending more and more time out of doors working for livelihoods, mothers were considered to be the more caring and responsible parent.

This has a different effect as well. Soon the fathers began to protest against this maternal bias and believed that they were being unnecessarily being excluded from the lives of their own children, through no fault of their own. They wanted custody of their own children as well. They argued that it was unfair to idealize the maternal love as all powerful and all encompassing. It was generally felt that custody should not be awarded on the basis of gender, but the intrinsic attributes of an individual, like his/her sense of responsibility, duty and so on.

Post the Great War things took a different turn altogether. The arguments considering gender bias were finally paid heed to. Until then, custody had been a completely gender based issue. But now for the first time, the concept of joint custody came into being. Both parents would have an equal share in the lives of their children. There are two types of custody that is legal custody where parents have an equal right to take decisions concerning their children. The second is physical custody where the children divide their time equally between both parents.

Therefore, quite understandably, more emphasis has been given to shared legal child custody and not to physical custody. A general pattern is indicated here. Women, quite unfairly under certain circumstances, are being given more preference when it comes to child custody whereas the fathers are left marginalized in the entire legal battle. In a bid to address such prejudice, men are now willing to take up a number of legal and socio-political actions, thus ending such unfairness for good.

About the Author:

Dennis Gac represents Father Rights Organization which helps fathers to regain their children's back into their custody. If you wish to know more about father rights just visit the website http://www.fathershelphotonline.com and more information about father rights.

Grandparents Custody Rights

By Thomas Robertson

Similarly to the case with parental rights, grandparents' rights custody differs in all 50 states. The issue of custody rights for grandparents can sometimes occur when either one or both parents come to die. Other cases include divorce or separation of the two parents.

There are also times when the child has resided with the grandparents for a period of time without the assistance of either of the parents. Further requirements will also need to be met for there to be a legitimate custody case.

Initially, grandparents need to petition a family law court when they want to obtain full or partial custody rights for their grandchild. Basically, there are two kinds of custody which can apply, which are: legal custody and physical custody.

Legal custody involves the rights of one parent to make major decisions relating to issues such as health care, education, religion, regarding the child's life. Who the child will live with and spend their time with will rather be the concern of physical custody.

Circumstances Which Can Determine Rights Custody for Grandparents

A majority of states in USA will enable the court to automatically grant full custody to either one of the child's parents. But there can be circumstances when the court may order grandparents rights custody of the child.

In certain cases, the grandparent might have already assumed their role as the primary parent and caregiver of the child for a year or longer. Other circumstances might include a reasonable cause such as abuse, neglect, substance abuse and mental illness which can significantly impact the parent-child relationship.

The law will also very much require that certain facts be proven through a family court before the grandparents are given full or partial custody. It must also be proven that it would be in the best interest of the child for the grandparents at times to have complete custody.

The grandparents will first need to display a genuine concern for the care and well-being of the child. Further to that, the relationship between the grandparent and grandchildren will have to be initiated through the consent of a parent or through a previous court order.

Grandparents rights custody may also be sought for partial custody, or visitation rights, just as between two biological parents. When the court will decide to grant partial custody rights to the grandparents, this will give them time to spend with the child without the approval or supervision of the custodial parent.

Habitually, child visitation rights are rarely denied to grandparents, and visitation rights are easily granted to them so that they may be able to spend time with their grandchild under the supervision of an adult, or the custodial parent.

It is also highly recommended to seek some legal assistance if there is a need to file a custody rights petition as a grandparent. This can be a very elaborate procedure, which is why having a qualified legal expert will be able to help in building the claimant with a strong case.

About the Author:

Before you go legal, make sure you check out Jeff Johnson's excellent free articles on issues related to grandparents' visitation rights and family law child custody