One popular resolution to this issue is to have your Woodlands Divorce Lawyer create an enforceable agreement whereby you and your ex agree to rotate the tax dependency exemption after a divorce where one parent claims the child(ren) in odd numbered years and the other parent claims the child(ren) in even numbered years.

Please contact a Woodlands Divorce Lawyer today to create an enforceable agreement to best maximize your dependency tax exemption after divorce.

Mediated Settlement Agreements have a long history of being accepted by judges virtually without question in countless divorce cases throughout all of Texas. The reason is simple, a Mediated Settlement Agreement reflects the agreement of the parties to the divorce and it would take a compelling reason for a judge to interfere with that agreement. That compelling reason may have appeared in the radar of the judiciary in the form of the children who are impacted severely by divorce settlements. The children are not involved in the Mediation process and in many cases have almost no input into what parent they will spend their time with and how they will spend their time with that parent.

In Texas, every judge is legally obligated to only enter an order that it believes is in the best interests of the children. What is a judge supposed to do when confronted with a Mediated Settlement Agreement that it believes it not in the best interests of the children? We will find out soon enough, but to avoid this situation in your Woodlands Divorce always remember to reach a settlement agreement that is in the best interest of your children.

In a recent case the Attorney General filed a suit to modify the child support obligation of a Harris County father for the benefit of his two disabled children who were each no longer under the age of 18. The father’s child support attorney reviewed the law and challenged the authority of the Attorney General to file the child support modification lawsuit.

The Texas Family Code specifically outlines which individuals have the authority to file a lawsuit for child support for adult disabled children. These individuals are:

1. a parent of the child or another person having physical custody or guardianship of the child under a court order;  or
2. the child if the child: (a) is 18 years of age or older; (b) does not have a mental disability;  and (c) is determined by the court to be capable of managing the child’s financial affairs.

The statute does not mention the Attorney General and after careful consideration the court found that the Attorney General does not have inherent authority to file a lawsuit concerning child support for an adult disabled child. The outcome may have been different if an individual who did have proper authority assigned their rights to the Attorney General.

This case is an important reminder that the Attorney General makes mistakes and even they are not above the law. If you want something done right then consider an experienced child support lawyer. Contact us today at (832) 592-7913 if you need legal help with your Montgomery County child support case.

If you would like additional information, check out our free Woodlands Divorce Guide.

Let’s take a look at one recent example from the Houston Appellate Court. In this case, the Mother and father divorced in 1972. The divorce decree ordered father to pay $50 per month in child support. In 2009, the mother filed an application for a writ of withholding alleging father owed $78,164 in unpaid child support. She won at the trial level and the decision stood on appeal.

Dormancy Does Not Apply

In ordinary civil lawsuits you can only obtain a judicial order to execute a judgment within 10 years of the judgment. If you ask the court to execute a judgment 11 years later they do not have jurisdiction. This case highlights the fact that dormancy does not apply to child support judgments.

If your ex-spouse did not pay their child support and your child is now over 18 call us at (832) 592-7913 and speak with a Woodlands Divorce Attorney about collecting the overdue child support. It is never too late to get what you are owed, even 37 years after the original child support order.

Parents with children usually have the most to lose if they let their divorce slide down that out of control path. Property can be replaced, but restoring a child’s feelings of confidence and security with their parent can be a lot more difficult and sometimes impossible. How do you protect yourself and your children from The Downward Spiral?

Surround yourself with professionals that are focused on your future relationship with your children and helping you move on with life after divorce rather than the cliché divorce lawyer that wants to re-live every wrong thing your spouse may have done during the marriage while you pay him hundreds of dollars per hour to do so. In a litigated divorce you are working without a net and when your case is at the brink of turning into an ugly divorce your only adviser may be the one who stands to profit most from it turning ugly. In a Collaborative Divorce all of the professionals are committed to keep your case from heading down The Downward Spiral.

Part 2 of the Collaborative Divorce videos is below. In this discussion the couples mention how important the Collaborative Divorce team was to keeping their divorce from getting ugly. If they had chosen to work with a non-Collaborative divorce lawyer their case probably would have taken a very different road and they probably would not want to sit next to each other today. Which outcome do you want to see in your divorce case?

About The Author

The Woodlands Divorce Resource is here to help you with your divorce, child custody, or other family law issue in Montgomery County or Harris County. Many of our visitors come from the areas of The Woodlands, Conroe, Oak Ridge North, Cut and Shoot, and other communities in the Montgomery County area or Houston and North Harris County. If you need legal assistance with your family law issue speak with a Montgomery County divorce lawyer in The Woodlands, TX today and protect your rights. Contact The Shea Law Firm at (832) 592-7913.

About The Author

The Woodlands Divorce Resource is here to help you with your divorce, child custody, or other family law issue in Montgomery County or Harris County. Many of our visitors come from the areas of The Woodlands, Conroe, Oak Ridge North, Cut and Shoot, and other communities in the Montgomery County area or Houston and North Harris County. If you need legal assistance with your family law issue speak with a divorce lawyer in The Woodlands, TX today and protect your rights. Contact The Shea Law Firm at (832) 592-7913.

What Will the Judge Do?

The legal responsibility of the judge in setting visitation for a child younger than 3 is to render an “appropriate order” under the circumstances that is in the best interest of the child. The judge has a lot of discretion to determine exactly what he or she thinks is appropriate, but there are some specific criteria the judge may also consider:

1. the age, developmental status, circumstances, needs, and best interest of the child;
2. the circumstances of the managing conservator and of the parent named as a possessory conservator; and
3. any other relevant factor.

After the 3rd Birthday

The statutes also provide that when the judge issues an order for visitation with a child younger than 3 that the judge must also render a prospective order to take effect on the child’s 3rd birthday. The prospective order is presumptively the Standard Possession Order.

Is Every Other Weekend Enough For You?

The core of the Standard Possession Order is visitation every other weekend. Many parents active in their children’s lives find this new restriction unacceptable, and rightfully so. However, in almost every case left up to the judge it is the visitation schedule the judge will fall back on as “legally appropriate” even if it is clearly unworkable in real life due to work schedules or other factors. If you want a custom visitation schedule consider Collaborative Divorce and the unique opportunities an un-litigated divorce offers to you and your children.

About The Author

The Woodlands Divorce Resource is here to help you with your divorce, child custody, or other family law issue in Montgomery County or Harris County. Many of our visitors come from the areas of The Woodlands, Conroe, Oak Ridge North, Cut and Shoot, and other communities in the Montgomery County area or Houston and North Harris County. If you need legal assistance with your family law issue speak with a divorce lawyer in The Woodlands, TX today and protect your rights. Contact The Shea Law Firm at (832) 592-7913.

Background

On November 6, 2007, Mother filed a petition to modify the child custody arrangement. Mother’s petition to modify followed Father’s earlier petition for enforcement and access after Mother denied him access to their child. The judge ruled for Father on his petition for enforcement and access.

In her later petition, Mother alleged that K.T.W.’s circumstances had materially and substantially changed since the entry of the previous order. She requested that Father’s “terms and conditions for access to and possession of the child be modified… to reflect visitation in regard to the over 100 mile visitation,” and that, since Father resided in Houston, he should “be responsible for pickup and return for visitation of the child.” Mother further pleaded that Father’s “change of address had caused [her] to incur increased costs.” Father answered and denied that there had been any “change of circumstances which would be grounds for any modification of the present Orders regarding access and possession.”

Discussion

At the trial court level Mother won her case and the judge modified custody to restrict Father’s access to his child. The Father appealed the ruling.

On appeal, Father claimed the trial court abused its discretion in signing the modification order because the record is devoid of evidence that the modification order was in the best interest of the child.

Pursuant to the modification order, the trial court reduced K.T.W.’s visitation with Father to only one weekend per month. To support the change, the trial court found the limitation was in K.T.W.’s best interest because of the “distance and travel time” from Mother’s residence to Father’s residence. The record of the hearing, however, shows that Father had lived in Houston continuously since 2002, when K.T.W. was born. Moreover, while Mother noted that she had moved to Allen from McKinney, Texas prior to the hearing, she agreed the move actually reduced the distance between her and Father. Mother also testified regarding alleged hardships in weekend travel and scheduling K.T.W.’s Taekwondo classes, but her testimony showed the Taekwondo lessons had been successfully rearranged to accommodate the visitation schedule. There is no other evidence regarding any extracurricular, sports, or school-related scheduling conflicts or difficulties. Mother acknowledged that the only change in K.T.W.’s circumstances since the entry of the previous order was that he had grown older. As for the “sporadic and unpredictable behavior” noted in the trial court’s findings, the evidence showed that Father had been late to pre-arranged pick-ups on two occasions, and that on each occasion he attempted, without success, to contact Mother to update her on the status of his arrival.

“The Texas Legislature has specifically stated that it is the public policy of the state to ‘encourage frequent contact between a child and each parent for periods of possession that optimize the development of a close and continuing relationship between each parent and child.’” “To achieve this end, the legislature established a presumption that a standard possession order provides the reasonable minimum possession of a child for a parent named as a joint managing conservator, as in the case here, and such order is in the best interest of the child.” Given this policy and the absence of any evidence to support a finding that it was in the best interest of K.T.W. to limit his weekend contact with Father to only one weekend per month, the Court of Appeals concluded the trial court abused its discretion in modifying the possession and visitation provisions of the previous order.

About The Author

The Woodlands Divorce Resource is here to help you with your divorce, child custody, or other family law issue in Montgomery County or Harris County. Many of our visitors come from the areas of The Woodlands, Conroe, Oak Ridge North, Cut and Shoot, and other communities in the Montgomery County area or Houston and North Harris County. If you need legal assistance with your family law issue call (832) 592-7913 to speak with a divorce lawyer in The Woodlands, TX today and protect your rights.

What Will the Court Consider?

Once your Woodlands Divorce Attorney is able to successfully rebut the presumption that the standard guidelines should apply the court should consider all the relevant factors of your case in determining the appropriate child support. Some of the most important factors the courts have traditionally considered are:

1. the age and needs of the child;
2. the ability of the parents to contribute to the support of the child;
3. any financial resources available for the support of the child;
4. the amount of time of possession of and access to a child;
5. the amount of the parent that pays child support’s (obligee) net resources, including the earning potential of the obligee if the actual income of the obligee is significantly less than what the obligee could earn because the obligee is intentionally unemployed or underemployed and including an increase or decrease in the income of the obligee or income that may be attributed to the property and assets of the obligee;
6. child care expenses incurred by either party in order to maintain gainful employment;
7. whether either party has the managing conservatorship or actual physical custody of
   another child;
8. the amount of alimony or spousal maintenance actually and currently being paid or
   received by a party;
9. the expenses for a son or daughter for education beyond secondary school;
10. whether the obligor or obligee has an automobile, housing, or other benefits furnished by his or her employer, another person, or a business entity;
11. the amount of other deductions from the wage or salary income and from other
    compensation for personal services of the parties;
12. provision for health care insurance and payment of uninsured medical expenses;
13. special or extraordinary educational, health care, or other expenses of the parties or of
    the child;
14. the cost of travel in order to exercise possession of and access to a child;
15. positive or negative cash flow from any real and personal property and assets, including a business and investments;
16. debts or debt service assumed by either party; and
17. any other reason consistent with the best interest of the child, taking into consideration
    the circumstances of the parents.

That is a long list. The details of your divorce case may require additional factors be considered as well. Speak with a Woodlands Divorce Lawyer today if you need help determining the appropriate child support in your unique situation.

About the Author

The Woodlands Divorce Resource is here to help you with your divorce, child custody, or other family law issue in Montgomery County or Harris County. Many of our visitors come from the areas of The Woodlands, Conroe, Oak Ridge North, Cut and Shoot, and other communities in the Montgomery County area or Houston and North Harris County. If you need legal assistance with your family law issue speak with a divorce lawyer in The Woodlands, TX today and protect your rights.

The first automatic order of the Montgomery County Courts is “No Disruption of Children.” Specifically, both parties to the lawsuit are ordered to refrain from doing the following acts concerning any children who are subjects of the case:

1. Removing the children from the State of Texas, for the purpose of changing the residence of the children or evading the jurisdiction of the court, acting directly or in concert with others, without the written agreement of both parties or an order of the court.
2. Disrupting or withdrawing the children from the school or day-care facility where the children are presently enrolled, without the written agreement of both parents or an order of the court.
3. Hiding or secreting the children from the other parent or changing the children’s current place of abode, without the written agreement of both parents or an order of the court.
4. Disturbing the peace of the children.
5. Making disparaging remarks regarding the other party or the other party’s family in the presence or within the hearing of the children.
6. Consuming alcohol within the 24 hours before or during any period of possession of or access to the children.
7. Permitting an unrelated adult with whom either party has an intimate or dating relationship to remain in the same residence with the children between the hours of 9:00pm and 8:00am.

We will continue reviewing the automatic orders in the next post. If you need assistance enforcing or modifying a court order in connection with your divorce speak with a Montgomery County Divorce Lawyer today.