Articles Posted in Child Custody & Visitation

What began as a seemingly routine surrogacy situation evolved into an international news story and a protracted court case, due to the emergence of some unique twists and turns in the case. Ultimately, the California courts rejected a surrogate’s efforts to be declared the legal parent of the triplets she delivered. The Second Appellate District Court concluded that the agreement the woman signed was legal and was entered into knowingly and voluntarily, meaning it was enforceable, and the surrogate was not entitled to parental rights.

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As a parent, one of the chief objectives most people seek to accomplish is to protect their children, particularly their minor children. This is especially true when the threat posed involves an element of sexual overtones. That was the scenario allegedly faced by one Los Angeles County dad, with regard to whom the Second Appellate District indicated that the law allowed the father to take action, not only in family court but also in civil court in the form of a restraining order.

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In cases involving issues of child custody and visitation, parents may seek to introduce a wide array of relevant evidence to persuade the court of the correctness of their arguments. One thing a parent cannot do, however, is disclose information from her ex-spouse’s therapy that is protected by the psychotherapist-patient privilege when the patient did not waive the privilege. In one Northern California case, a mother sought to do exactly that but lost because, regardless of relevance or the children’s best interests, the information was covered by the privilege and had not been waived.

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A famous book and an accompanying menagerie of merchandise counsels us, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.” In law, however, this isn’t always good advice. Sometimes, it’s the small stuff that makes all the difference between a successful outcome and an unsuccessful one. In a recent Southern California case, the Fifth District Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s ruling denying a mother’s request to move herself and her daughters from Bakersfield to the Los Angeles suburbs. The mom lost because none of the custody orders in her case had “the words ‘final,’ ‘permanent,’ or ‘judgment,’ or words to that effect.”

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When you go to court in a custody or visitation matter, there are a variety of options available to the judge in your case. As a recent ruling from the Second District Court of Appeal demonstrates, one component of your custody or visitation order may involve making drug screening a condition of custody or visitation if one of the parents has a history of drug or alcohol abuse. What’s more, the law covering this testing says that the court can make the parent continue getting tested for as long as the court deems appropriate.

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Today, there are many different types of families. Whether they look like fictional families from cinema (such as Three Men and a Baby) or real-world situations involving gay and lesbian parents, there are a variety of circumstances in which someone who isn’t a biological or adoptive parent might be placed in the role of parenting a child. For people in these situations, which legal rights do they have regarding that child? A recent Sixth District Court of Appeal case tackled that question, ruling that a child could possibly have three legal parents, allowing an uncle who was essential the only father-figure his niece had ever known to continue his fight for parental recognition.

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