Articles Posted in Custody

You are in the midst of a contested custody proceeding, whether it is with your present spouse or another relative to the child. You are concerned with allowing the judge to decide who your child should live with. You don’t think it would be the best for your child. So, you contact your attorney at Guest & Gray in Kaufman County who informs you of your options. If you don’t want the Court to decide, there’s always the option of a jury of your peers.

A parent is entitled to a jury trial on this issue of conservatorship and the jury’s verdict can’t be changed by the court. And, the 1st District Houston Court of Appeals in In Re Kathleen Elizabeth Reiter held that when a parent requests a jury trial, a court must grant the jury trial and this can’t be bypassed by the other party. Therefore, if you request a jury trial but aren’t granted one, your attorney will gladly bring this case to the court’s attention.

Additionally, the Austin Court of Appeals supported this right to jury trial in Winters v. Winters. There, the Court held that even where a parent had committed an act of family violence against the other parent, while this may mean that you can argue that the parent can’t be appointed joint managing conservator, that doesn’t mean that if they request a jury trial, they’re not entitled to one. Therefore, just because a parent committed an act of family violence, that doesn’t prevent them from seeking a jury trial on the issue of conservatorship.

You are unhappy with how custody and possession turned out for a child in your life, and you’re not the parent. But, you want to do something about it because you were part of the original proceeding, and you feel as though the circumstances (facts and evidence) have substantially changed since the judge rendered his/her opinion. And, you feel as though if the judge was updated on the new facts, then that decision could be changed. Maybe the child’s conservators haven’t been complying with the judge’s orders or they’ve started doing things that you believe are harmful to the child such as using controlled substances. However, you are concerned about how to even go about getting this process started. So, you contact your attorney at Guest & Gray in Kaufman County.

Your attorney advises that a nonparent can file a petition to modify the parent-child relationship if that nonparent was a party affected by the previous order that they are seeking to modify. In fact, the 14th District Houston Court of Appeals in In the Interest of S.A.M., P.R.M., and S.A.M., Minor Children produced a clear ruling for this type of standing and it broke it down into two analyses–what is a party and what does it mean to be affected.

The court held that a party, quite simply, is a nonparent who was actually a party to the prior original suit. That is, if the nonparent was an intervenor and the court never struck this designation. Or, if a nonparent filed the original proceeding or was a respondent.