Child custody rights in Texas stand at the heart of some of the most significant and emotionally charged cases in family law. When parents must divide rights, duties, and time with their children, the process can be overwhelming and complex. The law requires that the child’s needs remain the top priority, yet parents must also figure out how to cooperate in a way that benefits their child’s well-being. This can be especially challenging when navigating a divorce or working with a parent you were never married to. Successfully handling these cases demands patience, cooperation, and a strong understanding of your legal rights to ensure the best outcome for your child.
Setting goals and working with an attorney in custody cases
If your goal in the child custody case was to simply make it out on the other side without having lost too much money or too much time with your child, you are making a huge mistake. This is your best chance to establish court orders that function well for your family in the long term. The last thing you want to do is waste this opportunity by not focusing on goals and trying to arrive at solutions that work best for you and your family. Overall, the degree of success that you and your family achieve in a family law case is determined in large part by the goals you set for yourself and your manner of achieving those goals.
From our vantage point, here at the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, working with an attorney represents the most significant advantage that you can give yourself in the context of a child custody case. When the facts and circumstances of the case are not necessarily in your favor or the favor of your co-parent, that means you must draw important distinctions between yourselves and creative ways. This is where working with an experienced family law attorney can come in handy.
The attorneys with the Law Office of Bryan Fagan specialize in family law. We work on behalf of Texans every day in family courts across our state. Not only that, but we also know how to advocate for you and your rights both inside and outside the courtroom. For a free-of-charge consultation with one of our experienced family law attorneys, please do not hesitate to contact our office today. We have what it takes to help walk you through what may prove to be one of the most difficult legal circumstances that you have ever found yourself in.
What rights do you have in a child custody case?
Understanding your rights is a key part of any legal case. However, when you are trying to establish well-functioning and fair rights and duties in a child custody setting, it is especially important that you are aware of the circumstances and facts of your case. The reason for this is that the rights you have in a child custody case as a parent are all dependent upon the circumstances of the case and how you present them. This is true both in a courtroom and in negotiations.
You should carefully examine your life, that of your co-parent, and most importantly, that of your child as you begin a child custody case. Is your family in a good place, a bad place, or somewhere in between? I know that you may be assuming that every person who goes through a child custody case may be facing dire circumstances. The truth is that not everyone who goes through a family law case in this setting is facing the same type of circumstances. If your child is doing well in school, making friends, and participating in extracurricular activities, you and your co-parent may want to hold on to your current setup as far as how your child is attending school and spending time with family.
Understanding equal parental rights in Texas custody cases
If your child struggles and you feel unhappy with the time you spend with them, you may seek to change the situation for your family. You need a plan, and you need to know the rights available to you as a parent. Mothers and fathers hold equal rights and duties concerning their children in Texas. Many parents, often fathers, assume that mothers already have an advantage in family law cases, especially in gaining a large role in their child’s life after the case ends.
Where does this belief come from? Parents from every background, income group, and parenting arrangement often share it. Attorneys regularly counsel both fathers and mothers that Texas law does not put fathers at a disadvantage in custody cases. Fathers often feel relieved when they learn that they have the same rights concerning their children as mothers.
Challenging misconceptions about fathers’ rights in custody cases
As a father, has your child’s mother ever told you that the outcome of your custody case is already decided? Has she told you that no matter how hard you try or what relationship you have with your children, you have no chance to be named primary conservator? Has she told you that split custody is the best outcome you can expect? Many fathers hear exactly this from their child’s mother.
Sometimes mothers say this because they believe family law cases in Texas always end that way. Other times they say it to intimidate fathers and push them away from defending their rights in a custody case. You must carefully inspect your case and stay diligent in protecting your rights. If you fail to act, your child will ultimately suffer.
Your rights as a joint managing conservator
The law presumes that your child’s best interest is for you and your co-parent to serve as joint managing conservators. A conservator holds legal rights and duties concerning another person. The law encourages an arrangement where both parents spend as much time as possible with their child and provide the best possible care. Courts facilitate this by naming both parents as joint managing conservators. When courts name both of you as joint managing conservators, they give you the ability to spend time with your child, provide financial support, and care for your child even when you are not physically present.
You must provide your child with an education, health insurance, and medical care at a minimum. Your child must attend school until the law allows them to stop. You act as the primary safeguard against your child ending their education too soon. As a parent, you must make sure your child attends school and pursues the highest level of education they can achieve. This duty does not necessarily require you to pay for college, but it does require you to help your child finish high school.
Arguing for conservatorship and understanding your parental rights
You have the right to argue in your custody case for why you should serve as the managing conservator of your child. This means you have the right to present evidence in court in different forms to show why you are the more appropriate parent to serve as the primary conservator. A primary conservator determines the child’s primary residence and receives child support. The visitation schedule and amount of child support you may receive depend on your specific circumstances. If courts name you as the primary conservator, you gain the ability to spend more time with your child and receive financial support each month to care for them.
If courts do not name you as the primary conservator, they may instead name you as the possessory conservator. Possessory conservators still hold important rights in their child’s life. For example, you may not decide your child’s primary residence, but you still retain the right to visitation. Many parents view this as an improvement over the limited time they had with their child before the case.
Understanding visitation schedules and prioritizing your child’s best interests
Courts issue a specific visitation schedule in every custody case. This schedule accounts for each day of the year. You should learn and follow this visitation schedule closely. Doing so helps you and your co-parent work together to give your child consistency and predictability when spending time with both parents.
You must also recognize that your child’s rights take priority over yours. If you and your co-parent cannot agree on custody or conservatorship, a judge will decide for you. Parents often struggle to accept that their own best interests may not align with what benefits the child most. When you accept this reality and work toward solutions that benefit your child, you fulfill an important part of parenting. Protecting your rights matters, but prioritizing your child’s best interests will always matter most.
Child custody cases examined more closely
Child support is a topic in a Texas child custody case that always receives a great deal of attention. To be sure, parents and a child custody case have a lot to focus on. However, child custody is almost always one of those topics that catches people’s attention, and with good reason. There is something difficult for most families when it comes to managing the payment and receipt of child support. This is a touchy subject that carries with it emotional and financial consequences.
To begin with, if you are the parent who must pay child support, you are not without your rights. First, you have a right to visitation with your child regardless of whether you are paying child support. The bottom line is that your co-parent cannot withhold time with your child from you just because you are not paying child support. We will assume that if you can pay child support, you will do so. In that case, the reason why you would not be paying child support is due to you having lost your income or having had some other kind of unfortunate event occur in your life. In that case, you should notify your co-parent of the circumstances you are going through, but he or she does not have the right to withhold time with your children from you.
Knowing your rights and tracking child support payments
Next, consider that you also have a right to know where you stand with your child support payments. For this reason, the office of the attorney general has an online account where you can view your child support statements in real time. That way you can know exactly how much you are one child support and what sort of details are in your case. It is not as if you’re co-parent holds all the cards when it comes to being able to ensure that child support has been paid. You can hold him or her accountable by knowing where you are in the process of paying child support.
As a parent who is receiving child support, you have a right to be paid child support on time and in full each month. This is probably the most cited reason why parents run into difficulty after a family law case. The simple truth is that it is difficult to always pay child support each month. With that said, it puts the parent who receives child support in a tough position when child support is not paid each month. Child support can be used to help pay for rent, food, utilities, or clothing for your child.
Enforcing child support and protecting your custody rights in Texas
With that said, if you are running into problems with the payment of child support consistently, then you have options available to you. The main option available to you is to file an enforcement case against your co-parent. This enforcement case would bring to the court’s attention the violations of your child custody order and any details surrounding them. By doing so, you can also request relief from the court, such as back child support and penalties associated with each violation of the order.
The bottom line is that both parents hold important child custody rights in Texas, but the real challenge is knowing and protecting those rights. Without a clear understanding, you risk being taken advantage of during the custody process. At the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, our attorneys fight daily to defend and uphold our clients’ custody rights in courts across Texas. We appreciate you visiting our blog today, and we invite you to return tomorrow for more valuable insights into the world of Texas family law.
Questions about the material contained in today’s blog post? Contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan
If you have any questions about the material contained in today’s blog post, please do not hesitate to contact the Law Office of Bryan Fagan. Our licensed family law attorneys offer free-of-charge consultations six days a week in person, over the phone, and via video. These consultations are a great way for you to learn more about the world of Texas family law as well as about how your family circumstances may be impacted by the filing of a divorce or child custody case.
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