A parent granted sole custody, now referred to as sole legal decision-making, has the authority to make final decisions regarding the major life decisions affecting the parent’s children. Such as where the children will attend school, the healthcare the children receive, and the extracurricular activities the children will participate in regardless of the opinion of the other parent.
The other parent is still entitled to obtain information regarding his or her children’s performance in school, performance in extracurricular activities and healthcare from the other parent or directly from the provider of those services. Legal custody means the right and responsibility to make decisions for children, barring any specific court orders to the contrary.
Sole legal decision-making provides one parent to make the final decision on big day to day decisions for the children’s care and welfare without consulting the other parent, including education, medicine, and religion.
Examples where the court may award sole legal decision-making, would include those times where you have drug and alcohol abuse by one parent or the other, substantial child neglect or abuse claims, or convictions, domestic violence where the children were present, harmed, or in danger. As well as child endangerment, including DUIs while having the children in your car.
The visitation parent is expected by the court to conform to big decisions by the sole legal decision-making parent in all day to day decisions when children are with him or her. The exception to that would be private school. Sole legal decision-making parent cannot require the other parent, known as a visitation parent, to contribute to the cost of private-schooling if enrolled without the consent of the visitation parent or the court per the child support guidelines.
School records are also an area where both parents have access to records regarding the children, including medical records, school and extracurricular activity records. Those records are available through the sole legal decision-making parent or from the provider of the service. Except in cases where courts find giving one parent access to records creates a danger to the children. If you are in need of a professional or experienced attorney to represent you and your children’s best interest in any family law matter, please call Alan Cochran at Hildebrand Law PC at 480-305-8300 to schedule an appointment.
By: Alan Cochran
A parent granted sole custody, now referred to as sole legal decision-making, has the authority to make final decisions regarding the major life decisions affecting the parent’s children. Such as where the children will attend school, the healthcare the children receive, and the extracurricular activities the children will participate in regardless of the opinion of the other parent.
The other parent is still entitled to obtain information regarding his or her children’s performance in school, performance in extracurricular activities and healthcare from the other parent or directly from the provider of those services. Legal custody means the right and responsibility to make decisions for children, barring any specific court orders to the contrary.
Sole legal decision-making provides one parent to make the final decision on big day to day decisions for the children’s care and welfare without consulting the other parent, including education, medicine, and religion.
Examples where the court may award sole legal decision-making, would include those times where you have drug and alcohol abuse by one parent or the other, substantial child neglect or abuse claims, or convictions, domestic violence where the children were present, harmed, or in danger. As well as child endangerment, including DUIs while having the children in your car.
The visitation parent is expected by the court to conform to big decisions by the sole legal decision-making parent in all day to day decisions when children are with him or her. The exception to that would be private school. Sole legal decision-making parent cannot require the other parent, known as a visitation parent, to contribute to the cost of private-schooling if enrolled without the consent of the visitation parent or the court per the child support guidelines.
School records are also an area where both parents have access to records regarding the children, including medical records, school and extracurricular activity records. Those records are available through the sole legal decision-making parent or from the provider of the service. Except in cases where courts find giving one parent access to records creates a danger to the children. If you are in need of a professional or experienced attorney to represent you and your children’s best interest in any family law matter, please call Alan Cochran at Hildebrand Law PC at 480-305-8300 to schedule an appointment.
By: Alan Cochran
Hi, I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist and I practice at Jaburg and Wilk.
The way a client can make the most of their first meeting with me is to be organized and to bring me basic general information. So I want a simple statement of their assets and their liabilities. I’d like to see the most recent three years of tax returns. And I recommend the client bring notes. At least bullet points of the topics the client would like to cover in that first meeting.
I don’t ask them to bring a lot of documents to the first meeting. We’re going to follow up and gather a lot of documents during the process. Certainly I would not want the to bring a box of records to the meeting. It would be very inefficient, very expensive for the client for me to be thumbing through a box of records in that first meeting.
We’re looking for broad strokes of information. We want to identify in that first meeting what the assets are and what the liabilities are. To find out about their children. To know about income and expenses. To see if someone is going to be needing spousal maintenance for example. So just broadly identify the topics we’re going to need to address. We’re going to gather a lot of details along the way, but that wouldn’t be a useful way to spend our time the first meeting.
Hi, I’m Mitch Reichman. I’m a board certified family law specialist and I practice at Jaburg and Wilk.
The way a client can make the most of their first meeting with me is to be organized and to bring me basic general information. So I want a simple statement of their assets and their liabilities. I’d like to see the most recent three years of tax returns. And I recommend the client bring notes. At least bullet points of the topics the client would like to cover in that first meeting.
I don’t ask them to bring a lot of documents to the first meeting. We’re going to follow up and gather a lot of documents during the process. Certainly I would not want the to bring a box of records to the meeting. It would be very inefficient, very expensive for the client for me to be thumbing through a box of records in that first meeting.
We’re looking for broad strokes of information. We want to identify in that first meeting what the assets are and what the liabilities are. To find out about their children. To know about income and expenses. To see if someone is going to be needing spousal maintenance for example. So just broadly identify the topics we’re going to need to address. We’re going to gather a lot of details along the way, but that wouldn’t be a useful way to spend our time the first meeting.
I want to speak to you today about the different forms of legal custody of a child in the state of Arizona. When we talk about custody, we are really talking about two different aspects of custody as it relates to children.
The first of which is, how much time the child or children spend in the each parent’s home. We refer to that as physical custody.
But, the other aspect of custody has to do with who gets to make the major decisions affecting the child. For example, the decisions regarding education, such as where the child goes to school, medical decisions, the children’s participation in extracurricular activities and even the child’s religious upbringing.
If a parent has sole legal custody, that parent gets to make all those decisions irrespective of the wishes of the other parent. If the parents share joint legal custody however, both parents must agree regarding those decisions for the child. If you have any other questions regarding custody or parenting time in the state of Arizona, please feel free to contact me.
By: Chris Hildebrand
I want to speak to you today about the different forms of legal custody of a child in the state of Arizona. When we talk about custody, we are really talking about two different aspects of custody as it relates to children.
The first of which is, how much time the child or children spend in the each parent’s home. We refer to that as physical custody.
But, the other aspect of custody has to do with who gets to make the major decisions affecting the child. For example, the decisions regarding education, such as where the child goes to school, medical decisions, the children’s participation in extracurricular activities and even the child’s religious upbringing.
If a parent has sole legal custody, that parent gets to make all those decisions irrespective of the wishes of the other parent. If the parents share joint legal custody however, both parents must agree regarding those decisions for the child. If you have any other questions regarding custody or parenting time in the state of Arizona, please feel free to contact me.
By: Chris Hildebrand
Hi. My name is Mitchell Reichman. I’m a board certified specialist in family law and chair of the family law department at Jaburg & Wilk. Opting out is choosing to resolve a family law dispute outside the traditional judicial system. One of the ways parties can choose to opt out is by choosing to arbitrate.
Arbitration is a voluntary process. It’s beyond the jurisdiction of a judge to order parties to arbitrate. However, once parties do decide to arbitrate, a court order will be entered that appoints the arbitrator and governs the process. Generally in Arizona, arbitrations are governed by a set of statutes known as Arizona’s Arbitration Act. One of the advantages of arbitration is that the parties can choose the neutral that serves as the arbitrator based on the parties’ circumstances, particularly where the issues are specialized such as with the valuation of a business or professional practice. The parties can chose an arbitrator who has a greater amount of education, training, and experience than the judge randomly assigned to their case. This gives the parties the opportunity to obtain a more predictable outcome because the arbitrator is familiar with the issues that will be presented in a valuation analysis, and the judge might not be. An important difference between choosing to arbitrate a dispute as compared to a trial concerns the right to appeal.
Under Arizona’s Arbitration Act, people who choose to arbitrate have very limited rights to appeal the decision of the arbitrator. This is very dissimilar from their rights to appeal should a judge make the decision after a trial on the merits. Overall, however, in many cases we find that by choosing to opt out through a process of arbitration, we’re able to reach our goal of helping our clients obtain a more favorable result in their family law proceeding.
Hi. My name is Mitchell Reichman. I’m a board certified specialist in family law and chair of the family law department at Jaburg & Wilk. Opting out is choosing to resolve a family law dispute outside the traditional judicial system. One of the ways parties can choose to opt out is by choosing to arbitrate.
Arbitration is a voluntary process. It’s beyond the jurisdiction of a judge to order parties to arbitrate. However, once parties do decide to arbitrate, a court order will be entered that appoints the arbitrator and governs the process. Generally in Arizona, arbitrations are governed by a set of statutes known as Arizona’s Arbitration Act. One of the advantages of arbitration is that the parties can choose the neutral that serves as the arbitrator based on the parties’ circumstances, particularly where the issues are specialized such as with the valuation of a business or professional practice. The parties can chose an arbitrator who has a greater amount of education, training, and experience than the judge randomly assigned to their case. This gives the parties the opportunity to obtain a more predictable outcome because the arbitrator is familiar with the issues that will be presented in a valuation analysis, and the judge might not be. An important difference between choosing to arbitrate a dispute as compared to a trial concerns the right to appeal.
Under Arizona’s Arbitration Act, people who choose to arbitrate have very limited rights to appeal the decision of the arbitrator. This is very dissimilar from their rights to appeal should a judge make the decision after a trial on the merits. Overall, however, in many cases we find that by choosing to opt out through a process of arbitration, we’re able to reach our goal of helping our clients obtain a more favorable result in their family law proceeding.
Hi. My name is Larry Hirsch, and I practice exclusively in the domestic relations group at Jaburg & Wilk. Parenting coordinators are appointed by the court, and the main thing that they do is help parents make decisions when the parents can’t agree. Look, the parties are getting divorced. Clearly they’re not seeing eye to eye on everything, and more often than not they don’t see eye to eye on parental decisions, nor can they make even the most simplistic agreements on their own. And so a lot of times somebody needs some help, and that’s where parenting coordinators come into play.
Parenting coordinators are often either other family lawyers who are well-versed in custodial litigation, or they’re mental health professionals or medical doctors.
What kinds of issues are appropriate for what we call a PC to oversee? They’re issues like school, vacations, the change of a parenting day, the right of first refusal, babysitters, caregivers, even medical arrangements, medical decisions, which doctors they’re going to see. In other words, these are often things that people shouldn’t be litigating about. They shouldn’t be spending $10,000 on the issue of should I be picking up the kid at 3:15 on Thursday or 3 o’clock on Thursday? So that’s where parenting coordinators come into play – highly beneficial for the parties, saves a ton of money, also helps everybody’s mental health because things are handled quickly by the parenting coordinator.
Now, what are parenting coordinators not for? The main thing that a parenting coordinator is not for is making decisions with regard to decision-making authority or custody. In other words, if you are already divorced and you want to change your custodial access schedule – let’s say it’s week on/week off – and you don’t think father should be seeing the children that much any longer, the parenting coordinator is not the right person to go to for that. Unfortunately, the court is.
By: Laurence Hirsch
Hi. My name is Larry Hirsch, and I practice exclusively in the domestic relations group at Jaburg & Wilk. Parenting coordinators are appointed by the court, and the main thing that they do is help parents make decisions when the parents can’t agree. Look, the parties are getting divorced. Clearly they’re not seeing eye to eye on everything, and more often than not they don’t see eye to eye on parental decisions, nor can they make even the most simplistic agreements on their own. And so a lot of times somebody needs some help, and that’s where parenting coordinators come into play.
Parenting coordinators are often either other family lawyers who are well-versed in custodial litigation, or they’re mental health professionals or medical doctors.
What kinds of issues are appropriate for what we call a PC to oversee? They’re issues like school, vacations, the change of a parenting day, the right of first refusal, babysitters, caregivers, even medical arrangements, medical decisions, which doctors they’re going to see. In other words, these are often things that people shouldn’t be litigating about. They shouldn’t be spending $10,000 on the issue of should I be picking up the kid at 3:15 on Thursday or 3 o’clock on Thursday? So that’s where parenting coordinators come into play – highly beneficial for the parties, saves a ton of money, also helps everybody’s mental health because things are handled quickly by the parenting coordinator.
Now, what are parenting coordinators not for? The main thing that a parenting coordinator is not for is making decisions with regard to decision-making authority or custody. In other words, if you are already divorced and you want to change your custodial access schedule – let’s say it’s week on/week off – and you don’t think father should be seeing the children that much any longer, the parenting coordinator is not the right person to go to for that. Unfortunately, the court is.
By: Laurence Hirsch
Parents sharing joint legal custody, now referred to as joint legal decision-making, must reach agreements regarding major life decisions affecting their children. Each parent’s rights and responsibilities in communicating about reaching agreements regarding these decisions, are outlined in a court ordered parenting plan. Disagreements between parents regarding these decisions are often resolved through mediation, or through the use of a third person usually referred to as a parenting coordinator.
In Arizona, the law is that it is consistent with the child’s best interest. The court shall adapt a parenting plan that provides both parents to share legal decision-making regarding their child. New custody law encourages, but does not mandate equal parenting time. Additionally, the same section of the statute provides that the court shall not prefer a parent’s proposed parenting plan because of the parent or the child’s gender. It is always best if both parents can decide custody for the best interest of their children.
However, if not able to do so, the court will enact orders either joint or sole legal decision-making at the time of trial. Presently, there is a greater emphasis on parental responsibility as well as parental right. There is a presumption however, that joint legal decision-making is not in the child’s best interest if one of the parents has committed an act of domestic violence, abuse drugs, alcohol, or has being convicted of any drug offense within the last 12 months before the petition was filed.
The most compelling factors the court must consider when deciding legal decision-making and parenting time in Arizona, include the children’s relationship with each parent and any siblings, the children’s adjustment to each parents home, schools, and the community each parent resides in. Another factor is the wishes of the children, but only if the child is of a suitable age and maturity to make such decisions.
The mental and physical health of all individuals involved in the family and the children residing in the home. It also includes which parent is more likely to allow the children frequent, meaningful, and continuing contact with the other parent. The court also weighs any domestic violence, child abuse, and child neglect issues, as well as any intentional misleading of the court by either parent to cause unnecessary delay, increased cost of litigation, or to attempt to persuade the court to prefer the false-reporting parent’s position over the other. If you’re in need of a professional or experienced attorney to represent you and your children’s best interest in any family law matter, please call Alan Cochran at Hildebrand Law PC at (480) 305-8300 to schedule an appointment.
By: Alan Cochran
Parents sharing joint legal custody, now referred to as joint legal decision-making, must reach agreements regarding major life decisions affecting their children. Each parent’s rights and responsibilities in communicating about reaching agreements regarding these decisions, are outlined in a court ordered parenting plan. Disagreements between parents regarding these decisions are often resolved through mediation, or through the use of a third person usually referred to as a parenting coordinator.
In Arizona, the law is that it is consistent with the child’s best interest. The court shall adapt a parenting plan that provides both parents to share legal decision-making regarding their child. New custody law encourages, but does not mandate equal parenting time. Additionally, the same section of the statute provides that the court shall not prefer a parent’s proposed parenting plan because of the parent or the child’s gender. It is always best if both parents can decide custody for the best interest of their children.
However, if not able to do so, the court will enact orders either joint or sole legal decision-making at the time of trial. Presently, there is a greater emphasis on parental responsibility as well as parental right. There is a presumption however, that joint legal decision-making is not in the child’s best interest if one of the parents has committed an act of domestic violence, abuse drugs, alcohol, or has being convicted of any drug offense within the last 12 months before the petition was filed.
The most compelling factors the court must consider when deciding legal decision-making and parenting time in Arizona, include the children’s relationship with each parent and any siblings, the children’s adjustment to each parents home, schools, and the community each parent resides in. Another factor is the wishes of the children, but only if the child is of a suitable age and maturity to make such decisions.
The mental and physical health of all individuals involved in the family and the children residing in the home. It also includes which parent is more likely to allow the children frequent, meaningful, and continuing contact with the other parent. The court also weighs any domestic violence, child abuse, and child neglect issues, as well as any intentional misleading of the court by either parent to cause unnecessary delay, increased cost of litigation, or to attempt to persuade the court to prefer the false-reporting parent’s position over the other. If you’re in need of a professional or experienced attorney to represent you and your children’s best interest in any family law matter, please call Alan Cochran at Hildebrand Law PC at (480) 305-8300 to schedule an appointment.
By: Alan Cochran
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