good morning Facebook followers My Name Is Brandi Austin and we are going through your questions from last week thank you so much for sending them in we received a ton of questions and I think we’re going to focus today on General initial custody questions so without further Ado I’m going to pass you over to Larry Mike our family law attorney and he’s going to answer the questions hi Facebook live uh we’re here today apparently we got a bunch of questions so we’re going to go
through the questions and answer your questions as best as we can always remember that if you need a consultation we do offer free consultations at the brand Nelson Law Firm address is 2404 Roosevelt Drive Arlington Texas 76016 okay Larry our first question is what is joint custody when is joint custody well uh we hear a lot of questions about what is custody in Texas the courts divide custody into two separate things you’ve got conservative and access and possession when we talk about conservatorship
that’s basically the rights and duties of the parents with conservatorship you have something called Joint management conservatorship that’s where both parties jointly exercise the duties of the parents such as schooling medical decisions psychiatric decisions you know how to raise a child what do they do so when we talk about joint conservatorship we’re actually talking about the rights and duties that the parents exercise effectively jointly okay our next question is what is 50 50
custody 50 50 so I would assume that 50 50 means the actual physical possession of the child so when we’re talking about 50 50 most of the time people are saying hey when it’s either week on week off provision or some type of two to three or five two two schedule 50 50 when people talk about that they’re saying Hey I want to have as much time with my child physically as the other party okay great answer our third question is my ex wants 50 50 but I don’t think it’s a good idea what should I do
uh when we talk about that the one thing that you have to understand is that it takes two people to create a child uh and in my opinion and this is not the firm’s opinion but in my opinion it takes two people to raise that child even though the relationship between you and the other parent has diminished you still have a relationship with the child if there is a parent that wants to be there with the child wants to exercise their rights wants to to just be a father or be a mother then that’s a good thing
when it comes to a 50 50 provision there’s this thing that a judge told me one time where you’ve got good time and then she says you have crap time the good time are the weekends where it’s all the play It’s the going out to eat the amusement parks the crap time is you need to go take a shower you need to do your homework you need to eat you need to you know clean up one parent shouldn’t have to deal with all of that well and then one parent gets all the fun time both parents
should share that equally so when you’re thinking about that question think to yourself do I want to just have all the crap time and then this person has all the good time or do I want to share that equally and I think as a child growing up developmentally they need to be able to experience what it’s like to have both parents equally in their lives okay another question we got and this is when we get a lot I heard my child can say who or who he wants to live with is that true well uh in Texas the the child’s
decision is not the soul uh sole decision that the court takes into account when they’re determining who the child stays with the court uses What’s called the best interest of the child’s standard now when a child reaches the age of 12 they can express to the court their preference and the judge will take that into account but ultimately it’s up to the court to determine what is in the best interest of the child but certainly the child’s decision or wishes will be taken into account
okay and is it true that in Texas the courts favor the mother and if so why no that’s not true here’s the thing what I’ve seen in a lot of cases you have mothers and fathers that are battling comes to who has access and Who has possession of the children the one thing that you have to understand with that is a lot of times there is a parent who has been the main one that has taken the child to medical visits taking the child to school to dental extracurricular activities managing their daily routine
and then there’s one parent that hasn’t done that so when you go into court and you have this feeling that okay the court just favors this person or the other you have to realize you need to know those same things as well who the child’s dentist is who’s the doctor what’s the teacher’s name what’s the daily routine if you don’t know those things then yes the court is going to favor the other party who has been taking care of the child so your main mission if you want
to make sure that there’s not a feeling that the court is favoring someone over the other is to learn those things to learn your child to learn those behaviors so that you too will have the equal amount of time that you feel you deserve okay well that’s all the questions we have today Larry do you have anything you’d like to add you know just just one more brick thing a lot of times what we see parents and children is that uh there’s a there’s a big fight when it comes to kids and there’s one parent who says hey
this is my child but the child is both of yours so when you’re going into court you got to think what is in the best interest of my child and what should I do to make sure that what we’re doing in court does not affect my child if you keep your child at heart and you keep them at the Forefront of what you’re doing then hopefully you’ll be able to minimal minimize the stress of the legal system and be able to live your lives accordingly fantastic and remind everyone the areas of law we practice here so we do family
law as what you see you see here we also do personal injury bankruptcy Wills probate estate Criminal business law we we do it all so if you have any questions and you want a consult and you want to come to the firm once again our address is 2404 Roosevelt Drive Arlington Texas 76016 our phone number is 817-841-9906 technical difficulty with the card but uh that’s our address and that’s our phone number you can reach us on Instagram Facebook uh I think you can tweet us maybe but if you need to see us come talk to
us and we’ll be glad to help you out all right thank you for your time Larry thank you
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