Legal Custody Disagreements – Episode 308 of the Divorce University Online Podcast. When you are dealing with a narcissistic co-parent, legal custody issues are often difficult to navigate. If you are unable to reach agreement then filing in Court becomes the necessary step to resolve issues. But, that obviously gets very expensive and very stressful. So what are your alternatives? To learn more about how I can support you in achieving success in your custody matter, please schedule a free strategy session at www.divorceuniversityonline.com/vip-coaching. Thanks for listening!
Divorce University Online
Legal Custody Disagreements
- Hello, you are listening to the Divorce University online podcast with your host, Tammy Ferreira. - Hey guys, Tammy here. And in this episode, we're gonna talk about legal custody disputes. Now, I mean, legal custody disputes between two parents, right? When we're at odds with our co-parent, most people have joint legal custody vast majority of people, if you don't and you have sole legal, you should probably count that as a blessing 'cause not too many people have that. So we are going to dive into this, but before we do, let me just as always remind you, if you like my content, please hit like on this video. Please subscribe to the channel so that you get notified when new videos are released. If you're watching me on YouTube, if you are listening to the podcast, also please subscribe, rate and review me. That way you also get notified as new episodes are released. And please, please, please, my plea as of late has been, please share this on social media. The bottomless pit of people that need help around these topics is just overwhelming to me some days, the amount of people that are just searching for information and find my channel or my podcast because somebody shared it or told them or whatever. So please make sure we do that. So many people need help and we wanna help as many people as we can. When we talk about legal custody in the court, one of your options is to go for sole legal custody. I think that's difficult to do in the first instance. Some people accomplish that because the other side is, let's say if the other side's incarcerated. A lot of times is when you'll see someone have sole legal custody. Or if you have somebody on their side who is an alcoholic and is actively drinking or somebody who is a drug addict. Those types of things are the situations where we typically see one person have sole legal custody. It's not as typical to have one parent of sole legal custody just because the two people don't get along. Now, I have seen cases where over time, because the case comes in front of the court over and over and over again because of legal custody disputes between the parents that one person ends up with sole legal custody over time. And let me just clarify that when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about legal decision-making. So there's two components in custody. There is the physical custody component and then there's the legal custody component. Now on the physical side, some places just call it a parenting plan that tends to be what California does. We don't really have in California a primary parent. Some states establish a primary parent like Texas is one of the states where they establish a primary parent normally and then the other parent is the non-custodial parent. So the physical part kind of vary state to state, but legal custody across the board pretty much is joint in the vast majority of places that I've ever come in contact with. The legal custody portion of a case refers to medical, dental, therapy, school decisions, those types of significant parenting decisions. The day to day, where's the child gonna be and all those types of things, homework and all that kind of stuff, that sort of comes under custody, that physical custody, right? Holidays where they're gonna spend, what time the transitions are, all those pieces come under physical custody. When we're talking about legal custody, we're talking about health, therapy, school decisions, that aspect of it. And in the vast majority of cases, people have joint legal custody. That's the most common arrangement. So again, if you have sole legal, you should be counting your blessings that you're not having to deal with the other parent, you can just do whatever you wanna do. I do see cases sometimes where the court will say, okay, these parents have a lot of conflict around these decisions. But instead of giving one parent full sole custody on one piece of it or on the entire situation, we're gonna give each parent a piece. So I have seen cases where one parent has like, let's say the medical part of it and another parent has the school part of it. And so they get to make those decisions in regards to those two components. Really what the court is trying to do, when you have a lot of disputes around legal custody is they're trying to figure out how can we solve the problem and help these people have a mechanism for resolution outside of coming into court every time there's a disagreement on where the kids gonna go to school or what treatments they're gonna receive or what pediatrician they're gonna go to or whatever the case may be. The other way that they sometimes deal with it, which I think this is far more common than giving one person sole legal custody, is they will give somebody final decision-making or tie-breaking authority is what some places call it. Again, verbiage can vary a little bit state to state. And in those cases, what happens is you have to confer with the other parent. You don't get to just sole legal means the decisions are within my control. I make all the decisions. I don't have to talk to the other parent. I don't have to consider their input. Sole legal, it's up to me, I'm in control. I get to do whatever I wanna do. Final decision-making or tie-breaking authority means the parents are still to go through the process of conferring and trying to reach agreement and all of those things. But if they don't, ultimately, and they're at a deadlock, then one parent will sometimes be given final decision-making. So in practicality, it really doesn't have a lot of difference between sole legal and final decision-making 'cause ultimately, it's still in your control, right? So ultimately, it doesn't really change the outcome, but it does kind of change the process because if you have final decision-making or tie-breaking, you are still expected to have a discussion with that other parent, keep them informed, consider their opinion and their input on it and all of that kind of thing. If you still cannot find a way to resolve your issues and you don't have sole decision-making or sole custody or final decision-making, then the other thing that we see sometimes is the court will implement a third party, right? So they'll assign a parenting coordinator or they will send you to co-parenting counseling in the hopes that you'll be able to resolve your issues and learn how to work together. If you go to co-parenting counseling, I mean, again, these two things can look a little different, right? So it depends on what the judge feels is necessary given the history of what they've seen in your case. So if you're going in with a co-parenting counselor, let's say, then that person's job is to try to help the two of you work through your areas of conflict and to help you try to reach agreement. But that co-parenting counselor isn't necessarily vested with any authority to make the decision if you guys still can't reach agreement. If you still can't reach agreement with a co-parenting counselor, a lot of times you still have to go back into court, okay? But if the court assigns what we call a parenting coordinator, then typically that person will have some decision-making authority to where, okay, they'll try to help you guys reach agreement, try to help you work through it. But if you don't ultimately, that parenting coordinator becomes the decision-maker. You know, so if we're going through this level of conflict and we don't have these types of mechanisms in place where somebody has solegal or there's final decision-making or you're working with some sort of third-party authority, then what happens is we get an impasse about something, say one person wants the child in therapy and the other person doesn't. Well, the only way that the person that wants the child in therapy can do anything about that is defiling court. And so they end up in front of the judge and then the judge is the one making that decision. Now, my late husband Thomas used to refer to that as the court being the superparent. So you have to recognize that when you're having this much conflict with the other parent and you end up having to go to court over everything, you're essentially making the judge, the decision-maker in your child's life. And you know, the problem with that is that you may not agree with the court on how to raise a child. Right, every parent I know has differing ideas on what is, you know, good for a child or what's best for the child or whatever. And so we're going in front of this judge who may or may not share our values and we're essentially leaving it up to them because we're in so much disagreement with the other parent that we can't come up with a solution. So to me, having either tie-breaking authority or even maybe having co-parenting counseling, which I know none of us is going, oh, yay, let me go in with my crazy narcissistic high conflict ex and try to do co-parenting therapy, right? But at least that keeps the decision within the two of you. And in all honesty, most of the time, we do have a more aligned value system with our ex than with the court or some random custody expert or somebody like that. Now, that isn't always true. Sometimes we're totally at odds with our ex on values and things and that's the problem. We thought we were on the same page but then we figure out we weren't. That's kind of what happened in my first marriage. But still, I will say that my ex husband and I are probably more aligned on the values around raising our kids than I would be with, say, a judge from the court or whatever. So you have to kind of take all that into consideration when you start thinking about asking for some of these alternative solutions. The good thing about those alternative solutions is they can be a lot less stressful than going to court every time there's a disagreement. They can also be quite a bit less expensive. I've had people say, well, what I'm gonna pay to go see this parenting coordinator or co-parenting counselor or whatever mechanism you choose and then it'll be paying for that out of pocket. Well, yeah, but if you think about how much you pay for attorneys when you go into this situation or even if you don't have an attorney and you're paying for paperwork help, or you're paying for some outside resource to help you navigate the process, all of that costs. And even if you're not, even if it's just you doing it yourself and you say, well, doesn't cost me anything 'cause I do it myself, well, then you're paying in the form of time. It's just a different method of payment. And money is infinite. Essentially, time is finite. So if you're paying with your time, you're actually paying more probably than you would be paying if you were paying money because you never get that time back. Time is defined and you only get so much of it and there's so many hours in a day and there's so many days of our lives, right? And so when that's up, that's up. And so you have to choose wisely how you're spending your time. And I would venture to say that, you know, disputes with your ex are not at the top of your list of things to spend your time dealing with. So you wanna look at all that when you're trying to make the decision about how best to come up with some alternative that would provide resolution to where you don't have to keep going in front of the judge over legal custody disagreement. The next thing that I wanna tell you that I think is very, very important is that, you know, both parents have legal custody rights. Now, a lot of times we're in disagreement on an issue and we sort of feel like, well, we're in disagreement on this issue, so it's not gonna happen. And I'm not here to tell you, you can unilaterally do whatever you want. I think that can get us in trouble with the court. And I think that, you know, it doesn't reflect well on you. And I think that it's always best when you can reach agreement with the other parent. But when it comes down to decisions that are really sort of life or death in a lot of ways. And I've had this, I've actually had a client once whose child needed this, the child had a chronic illness and desperately needed this surgery or their condition was just going to continue to deteriorate worse and worse. And, you know, the other parent didn't want the child to have this surgery for whatever reason. And, you know, you have to understand that in urgent situations, in emergency situations, you do still have rights to your child and to make certain decisions, you know, especially when they're in your care. And I will give you an example. Now, again, I'm not saying that you can just run out and do whatever you want to do and disregard the whole system. I'm not saying that. But I will tell you that this really reared its ugly head when the COVID vaccines started coming out because that was one point that a lot of parents disagreed on. You know, some parents felt like I want the kid vaccinated, why wouldn't I want the child protected? Or I have family members that are at risk. So I need the child vaccinated. And you had other parents who said, you know, I don't really want my kid vaccinated against this. I feel like their immunity will do what it needs to do in regards to this. And so, you know, people on the opposite sides of this, and we had parents that went and vaccinated the child. And I don't know of anyone. Now, if you know of someone, you know, write it in the comments and let me know, I don't personally know of any case where any parent was punished for that choice. Did the court recognize that maybe the other parent disagreed and they went and did it anyway, which isn't a great co-parenting thing? Sure. But I don't know of anybody that lost parenting time or was fined or, you know, got in trouble in any significant way with the court for going and doing this. And of course, once a vaccine's done is done. There's not a lot you can do at that point, right? So parents still have, you know, legal custody rights within a certain, you know, domain. I mean, you just, you do. Your legal custody rights are there, whether you're in agreement with the other parent or not. And like I said, you don't want to go against court orders. I'm not saying that. But a lot of times I have people that'll call me and they don't even have court orders yet. And they're like, well, me and the other parent disagree on this legal custody issue, you know, about getting this surgery or seeing this therapist or whatever it is, and you don't have any court orders. Well, you don't have any court orders. You're not violating anything. You're a parent, you have legal rights. You can do, you know, whatever you would do, just like you were, if you were married. Like it doesn't make any difference. You don't have any orders in place that are stopping you from doing that. You know, so again, you know, I'm not trying to like, say you can just unilaterally exercise your rights, but I think that to a certain point and under certain circumstances, you can. So if you're facing some kind of extreme situation or, you know, the child's life is at risk or different things like that, just know that you do have certain things in place. You have those constitutional parental rights. The main thing that you wanna focus on when you're in front of the court on a legal custody issue or a disagreement with the other parent is you want to paint a picture of how this impacts the child, okay? And especially if you do wanna go after final decision-making or you wanna go after sole legal custody, you know, or something that puts things more in your control, then you wanna focus on how it impacts the child and the pattern of the behavior. So we don't just wanna give a one-off incident or, you know, two incidences in a one-year period or something kind of where the court's going, this is, you know, maybe the other parent just has concern about the specific thing or, you know, when something's kind of like a one-off or has only happened once or twice, I find that most of the time courts tend to give the parent the benefit of the doubt and kind of go, well, you know, anybody can have a bad day, right? And so they kind of give that grace a little bit. But when you can keep records and you can document things, and by that I don't mean go into your parenting app and document it to the other parent. I mean privately, keep your cards close to your chest, keep a private log of different things. And as you have issues with trying to reach agreement with the other parent, you document that. And then when you can show a pattern of behavior of like the child hasn't, I haven't been able to get the child into therapy for over six months. I've tried multiple times. I've sent three names for the other parent to choose from. They have not chosen a name. They haven't followed up. I've sent two reminders. I haven't gotten a response. You know, when you can show that kind of pattern of behavior and you're showing that, hey, this child is having problems, maybe the child is acting out or they're having problems in school or their grades are dropping or they're having disciplinary action at school and you're going, look, this child needs to be in therapy. Here's all the things that are happening and I need to get the child in therapy and the other parent is not cooperating in doing that. They won't, you know, participate in choosing someone. They won't give me any ideas. You know, I actually have a client right now where this is happening with school. They don't agree on where the child's going to go to school and they don't have any orders in place. They are in court, in the court system and they had orders for the previous school year. But of course, we're in a season where schools recently starting for everybody and these two people are in disagreement. And so the court orders aren't really helping because, you know, mom is my client in this situation and when mom tries to show the court orders, the school's like, well, that's last year's court orders. That's, that, that, that, that only addresses last school year. The court didn't write anything into the order about this school year. So you and the other parent are going to have to agree in order to get the child in school. Well, the problem with that is dad's not agreeing and dad's not just not agreeing, he's not giving feet back. You know, he's just, he's continuing to argue and for his position and kind of be like, it's either this school or nothing. And then, you know, and the school he wants to use, you know, I think costs money and then, you know, mom's like, well, where's the money coming from? Because we're not paying for school now. How are we going to pay for school then? He doesn't respond to that question. So she's like, well, I'm not going to roll them in a school that's going to then cost money that I don't have and whatever. And the child, you know, can't stay in their current school because dad disenrolled them even though he shouldn't have. And now that school won't take them back because they're in disagreement. And it's just this big fiasco. And the moral of the story is the child's not in school. Like school has started and this child is not in school. You know, and so mom's kind of to the point where she's like, you know what, I'm just going to not mention dad or legal custody and I'm going to get the child enrolled in a program and I'm going to go on from there. And we're going to just have to, you know, change it when the court gives us an order if they want us to change it. And I mean, you know, that's kind of a good example because it's like, well, what's the alternative? The alternative is for the child not to be in school, which is, you know, that's illegal, right? So the child's supposed to be in school. You can't just sit and let your, you know, third grader or whatever, like not be in school and not do anything about it. And, but yet your hands are tied because the other parent isn't cooperating. And so finally mom just decided, you know what? I'm going to go over here to a school that like doesn't really know us. I'm just going to unilaterally enroll the child and start school and wolves have to figure it out when we get to that. And, you know, I said to her, you know, if you're questioned by the judge, then all you can do is say, I'm sorry, I did what I felt was right for my child because I didn't feel it was right for her to not be in school. So what else can you do? So, so I think there are situations like that where you have to decide, like, okay, am I going to let this hold the child back from getting what they need? Or am I just going to do what I need to do? You know, apologize later if I'm, you know, wasn't supposed to make that particular decision. And I think if your decision is motivated by what's best for the child, I think most of the time the court tries to understand that, you know, as long as it's not being motivated from a position of I'm just arguing with the other parent, but I'm actually focused on trying to get something done for the child. And then you can show this pattern of behavior. Again, in this case, there's a lot of communication back and forth where there's just no resolution. It's just continued arguing lack of follow up, lack of follow through on dad's side. And so we're still at this impasse and the child has no school set for the year, you know. And so if you can keep a record like that and be able to show the court, you know, I think that this person in particular is going to be able to go in and have some leverage on asking for final decision-making or on sole custody because I mean, it's so extreme that the child isn't in school, right? That's that's pretty extreme in, in my opinion. That's one of the most extreme that I have seen. So again, if you can show how this is impeding the child's access to things that they need like therapy, education, health care and how the other parent is being a barrier to that, that's going to get you a lot of leverage with the court. Now, does the two of you having conflict play into it also? Yes, I've also had a case like that, a case in California where dad was so, and I don't know why these are always dad, but these just the two examples that came to my mind are, in this case, dad didn't necessarily fight with mom about the kids being enrolled in anything. He just said, you know what? I'm not taking them on my parenting time. And he had, he had 50/50 parenting time. And he just said, nope, I'm not taking them to therapy. I'm not taking them to tutoring. I'm not taking them to whatever. You can make all the decisions you want. You can enroll them. You can do whatever on your weeks. I don't really care. I'm not spending my time with the kids like that and I'm not taking them. And what started, it took some time, but what started happening is the court started cutting down that person's parenting time. And so it just got reduced lower and lower and lower until, you know, I think he got down to like every other weekend because that's all that the court could do because he wasn't willing to take the kids to the things that they needed to be involved in, you know, through the week as part of their education and health and therapy treatment. Now, I, you know, just want to kind of recap a little bit. So legal custody, again, we're talking about medical, just, you know, decisions, education, therapy, all those kinds of things. It isn't about the physical custody part, which is where the child lives. So, you know, you can ask for sole legal or final decision-making. You can ask for help from third parties like co-parenting counselors, parenting coordinators, you know, no, you know, be reassured that you do still have rights if you are at a complete impasse and sometimes you have to like do whatever you got to do as a parent and then, you know, ask for forgiveness later. Like I said, you know, sometimes the effect on the child is so negative and so detrimental that as a parent, you know, you just got to do what you got to do. Again, you want to focus on how this issue impacts the child and the pattern of behavior from the other parent. Okay, more so than just their difficult and you don't like dealing with them, all right? But conflict between you is also an issue. And one of the things that I will say to people sometimes is like, you know, if you can go in front of this judge and be like, look, if we don't do something to resolve this, we're going to be here over and over and over again because we can't seem to reach agreement on anything. That will usually get a judge's attention and then we like, I don't want to see this case over and over and over. I need to give them some tool that's going to help resolve this, okay? So if you would like to learn more about my coaching services, you can go to divorceuniversityonline.com/vip-poaching. There's a link on that page where you can enroll for an appointment to talk to one of my staff and learn about my services and how I might be able to help you on this journey. All right, talk to you guys next time. (upbeat music) - Thank you for listening to the Divorce University Online podcast with your host, Tammy Ferreira. For more information, visit www.divorceuniversityonline.com.