👶🏼👶🏼👶🏼 Tales from Divorce Court...Change Custody/Change a Kid's FUTURE 📖📖📖

Making a major change in a child's environment can dramatically change her/his life...FOREVER. Modifying custody and which parent is the 'majority time' parent is a big move; high risk/high reward. 

In this episode I share some 'Tales' of how I have helped people change custody. Learn about some common situations where this is possible related to factors such as academic/school performance, parental alienation, and more....

Contact us: polson@familylawchicago.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

On episode 31 of the Lunch and a Divorce Lawyer podcast, I return to some tales from divorce court this month. I'm talking about the big kahuna changing custody of your child. It can be scary. It's a high risk, high reward situation and, having been involved with these types of cases for 20 years, I'll tell you this it's a difficult thing to do. Tell you this it's a difficult thing to do, but I'll also say absolutely some of my most rewarding experiences as a divorce and child custody lawyer have been involving changing custody, big changes in a child's life, going from one parent to the other. So here we go. Here are some tales from the divorce courts of Chicagoland and some common cases so you'll have an understanding of when it might be time for you to change your child's life for the better. I'm going to share three stories based on real cases that drastic change that has the potential to help a child's life and a family unit, literally for generations going forward. I absolutely firmly believe that. I know it sounds grandiose, but you get a kid out of a toxic situation and get them in to a proper, just more positive, healthy environment right, that can turn that child's life around and who knows where it goes from there if you put somebody in a better position to be successful. So these three stories and three cases are obviously just, you know, matters that people happen to hire me and my law firm to assist them with. So here they are, and they're also fact situations that I want you to help see, because, although some of the cases got a little nutty and off the wall and the people and the personalities and the emotions in each case were, you know, very unique, the three sort of big fact situations are not that unique, common situations that I come across and you as a listener, potential client, a person going through a family law crisis might fit into two. Your family, your child, might fit into two.

Speaker 1: 3:58

So first I'm going to talk about the new family situation where a we had a woman I'm just going to call her Monica for the sake of this discussion to protect her confidentiality and I think we'd handled her divorce. I'm quite sure we had this one's a little bit on the old side and the divorce case was quiet, relatively uncontested, if I recall correctly, and the parties had a pretty amicable settlement and maybe pretty equal parenting time, or Monica actually might have had slightly less parenting time, I think, when she got divorced. Maybe she was a little unstable, she'd been a little bit abused in the divorce and she had some challenges to overcome. But a few years down the line we changed custody of oh, it was a child who was about middle school age, and this is where I'm going to talk about the new family. The ex-husband got remarried and I believe he starts to have children, younger children than he had with Monica. I think him and Monica just had one child, so now he has new, younger children with his new spouse. I also believe that there were stepchildren involved. So now the ex-husband and father has this family unit where he has a new spouse and a whole number of kids I think it's around five from my memory right New, really young kids and some stepchildren, plus the child he had with Monica, who was the oldest child.

Speaker 1: 6:01

And tell me if this rings true to you or your situation, because what was going on with Monica's son was, at some level. The ex-husband and the father was really starting to treat him poorly and almost not a second-class citizen that's not the right way to say it but he was giving priority, greater love and affection to the new family and I definitely see that come up here and there, right, maybe there's some bitterness or, you know, in this particular case with Monica the divorce wasn't particularly bitter. But you know, maybe somebody goes through a real juicy, combative divorce or custody battle and right, that sort of taints them with some negative, you know, feelings, glasses. I think it almost gets into the relationship with the child and now he or she right in the case I'm talking about it's the father, ex-husband is sort of refreshed and maybe there's some positive stuff going on here where he meets a new significant other, starts to have this other family. That kind of doesn't come with the baggage of little Johnny.

Speaker 1: 7:31

But then functionally, what was happening with Monica's son is, like I said, he wasn't being treated well. It wasn't abuse or anything of that ridiculous nature, but he was kind of the low person on the totem pole when he would be with that family unit. That was a big issue. He was also the oldest. So it's like you got some middle school aged kid or something, you know who. I don't know the kid, but I mean I was in middle school once. Hopefully most of us were. I was in junior high. I was junior high when I was that age. But you know he's probably wanting to play basketball or be in the band or whatever and he's kind of like he's like the babysitter for this new family unit. He's like stuck staying at home all the time with the new family unit. So that's change custody scenario number one because when that fact situation presented itself the new family and let's say, the old family, old child sort of starting to get treated poorly, second tier sort of situation being the babysitter and not being nurtured it was that set of facts that allowed us to make a big move and make Monica the majority time parent and do a big custody change. Okay, so that's story number one. Is there a new family unit that's kind of causing problems for your son or daughter where you need to make a change? Okay, new family that's a tale from divorce court. My old friend Monica, my old client Monica.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Second, john boy. This guy was a heater, his case was in court a lot. And what's the theme? What's the title for story number two? It's basically the parent who was a victim of alienation on the part of the other parent, part of the other parent. In other words, john was constantly frustrated, undermined, that case, that dude, everything in the book was thrown at him Five to eight bogus uh like child protective service, dcfs, bogus reports, um, you know Late, skipped parenting time because you know mom would like have fake visits to the doctor for their son. Excuse me, Just every trick in the book using bogus orders of protection against John. It's been a minute since this case happened.

Speaker 1: 10:37

But the status quo after John's divorce is he had normal I'll say normal or sort of limited, but sort of limited slash normal parenting time as the not majority time parent, maybe alternate weekends, I think it was in that situation, which I think is a little less than average these days. But that's what his setup was and basically, over a number of years, it was just like his ex-wife and the mom, like I said, would just use every bogus tactic in the book to um, to frustrate John's. You know again, this minimal let's, you know, alternate weekends, right, four days a month ish, right, depending on the length of the month, right, depending on the length of the month. And so so often she was just again fake TCFS reports, fake orders of protection, fake like medical, like sickness, medical stuff. Oh, I had to bring our little son to the, to the emergency room. Sorry, john, you can't have visitation. So his parenting time was just being frustrated left and right.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Okay, so if that's, you think about what your move is, because one of the factors when we're talking about the award of custody majority parenting time of a child in Illinois, one of the factors is each parent's willingness to facilitate the relationship of a child or children with the other parent. And eventually this is what I was able to latch onto to make the big move where we were able to flip majority time parenting from ex-wife mom to John. And you know it was a harrowing ride. In that case, I remember kind of became a thing where we kept hitting the ex-wife with contempt of court, you know, for not following court orders, right, she was not allowing the parenting time. Then she'd get hit with contempt of court and the judge would say like hey, ok, as the purge or sort of the punishment, if you will, for contempt, john would get makeup parenting time. So it's like now John gets the next six weekends in a row, right, even though his normal parenting time is only every other weekend. And then she'd deny that. And what eventually we were able to do is, through a contempt of court case, we were able to flip possession of the child to John and then we subsequently, you know, did a full on, you know, custody change or, you know, made John the majority time parent. So that's that's story number two about John.

Speaker 1: 13:54

And the big topic right is the ex is the other parent alienating you from your child? To such an court like, hey, you know, mom or dad needs to have possession of this kid, or the other parent is never going to have a relationship. Ie, most judges are going to want to say I want this kid to have a relationship with both parents and if mom has custody, she's going to be constantly frustrating dad and just screwing him out of his parenting time, whereas if dad has custody, he's still going to at least be honoring the parenting time schedule. So we have the new family situation, we have the alienation situation and my final story I actually have two gentlemen, two guys I'm going to call them Ben and William, just for the sake of confidentiality and to keep things fun here and I'm calling these the education.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Let's call them the. You know, take your son or daughter to school, facts, okay. And these two gentlemen are, you know, they were different in different ways or you know, but the crux of both of these, and one of them was like a full-on trial battle. One of them I think we kind of resolved eventually with the sort of the guardian ad litem for the children weighing in pretty heavily, for I think it was William, but Ben, his case went to trial. It was a two or three day trial situation and you know, right, one issue doesn't win the day.

Speaker 1: 16:04

But one of the easiest, strongest pieces of evidence is is school records right? Right, it's not, not, he said, she said it's not. You know kind of subjective stuff it's and it's an easily kind of admissible piece of evidence. I think generally it's a governmental record, so you don't have to do much with it. It'll just come in as evidence. And it's like In these two cases it was like the kids before we changed custody, the children in these cases simply weren't getting to school anywhere near 100% of the time.

Speaker 1: 16:47

They were getting to school like 40 to 60% of the time, and or they were tardy a ton as well, and so right, you have these simple black and white records, right. And or they were tardy a ton as well, and so right, you have these simple black and white records, right, this kid's missing school half the time and they're tardy half the time. And oh, by the way, when you're tardy half the time and you're absent half the time, your grades suck too. And so that in Williams' cases, you know, although involving a lot more than that those cases, I think, at a real fundamental level, were like, like these children in these cases, like when you talk about, like changing the trajectory of a kid's life, it's like these kids were starting to get into the box of being held back from school and this sort of thing. And I mean just saying that doesn't sound that bad. But you know, once you start to be behind, you know you're sort of like the social outcast at your school. It's going to damage your confidence, the social group, not to mention academic performance, potential for college, higher education and just all the jazz that goes with that.

Speaker 1: 18:01

And so Ben and William really are fond memory type cases where these kids got out of just bad situations, unstable situations, and I know one of those at at least Ben.

Speaker 1: 18:18

I've kept in contact pretty well and you know his daughters have. Just I mean I'm not saying they're like knocking, rocking out the world like crazy, but like you know, they got on a college track and just doing well and building their lives, whereas you, prior to the custody change, it was kind of like a freak show over at the moms. So are you, do you, let me ask, have a case where you can make a big custody change? And right, it's not something to force because it's a big case, it's one of the harder, higher risk cases out there in the family law space. But think about these three stories Monica, with the new family situation, john being alienated from his son and Ben and William with kids who weren't getting to school. Do you got any of those situations? It might be time for you to, you know, create a new story for your son or daughter by making a big custody change. So I hope you enjoyed another edition of Tales from Divorce Court the Big Kahuna Changing Custody.