custody and parenting time can be
modified
upon a showing of what’s known in legal
terms
a change of circumstances the simplest
level a change of circumstances can mean
that
the child’s developmental needs have
changed if there’s a dissolution or a
child custody order when the child is
one year old or two years old the
parenting time is going to be different
than it is if a child is 9 or 10 years
old
generally when they’re very young and
developmentally still in a very early
stage
parenting time
will largely reside with one of the
parents when they’re an infant there
might not even be
um overnight parenting time but once a
child is four or five years old you can
go back to the court and seek a
modification based on the fact that the
child’s developmental needs have changed
and more time would be awarded to
the non-custodial the parent with the
least amount of of parenting time by the
time children are six seven eight years
old we’ll often see equal parenting time
schedules that have developed from
schedules earlier where maybe the father
had the children every other weekend
or maybe one night a week and not even
an overnight that’s the base level of
modification
if
you want to modify legal custody
that’s a little higher hurdle
than parenting time alone
because to modify legal custody say
there’s an award of joint legal custody
and one of the parents thinks it’s more
appropriate
for the custody order to be sole legal
custody for
for one of the parents
you have to prove
that
circumstances have changed such that um
the court could view the children’s
development
to be at risk
they call it endangerment is another
word for that so if they’re if you can
show there’s neglect if you can show
that they’re not getting their vaccines
on time if you can show that
there’s
domestic abuse or sexual abuse if you
can show um other
types of
things
that say that the new partner of the of
the other parent
is is violent and the children are
witnessing acts of domestic violence
that’s grounds for modifying legal
custody but it’s a very high hurdle it’s
not going to happen under a court order
unless you can you know make the
threshold case
that uh these children are their their
psychological or their physical or
mental health
intellectual development is all at stake
and is being harmed for instance the
parent isn’t getting the children to
school on time or they’re absent 20
times a semester grounds to change legal
custody