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Welcome to Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell with Certified Family Law Specialist Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, who is the founder and managing partner of Primus Family Law Group. Hi, Bonnie.
Hi, Michael. How are you doing today? Terrific. Beautiful day in San Diego, as always.
Last time we had a Family Law Matters episode, you gave out an email that people wanted to write and ask questions. Support at Primus, P-R-I-M-U-S, PrimusFamilyLaw.com. And people have been writing. One of the topics that I think is particularly high on people’s minds right now, given the fact that school essentially is back, however, wherever, however it’s being done, people are beginning to think about their parental rights with respect to where children are.
One unique question came up, and that is about the one parent, I forget whether it was a mother or father, decided to take their kids to another school district and didn’t inform the other parent. You get the call for that. What do you do? Well, if this had been done a little earlier, let’s say like the beginning of summer, you could file a motion and request that the court adjudicate the issue of either the choice of school, if that’s the issue, meaning what district should the children go to, but if it’s already in the school year, and I got to believe that the children are already registered in a school district, then you might have to have an emergency hearing because somebody is trying to upend what has been the status quo and do what they want to do.
Now, of course, it depends what their orders say. Usually, the parents are allowed to move wherever they want, usually. Some agreements or some orders will have area specific where you can move.
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For us in San Diego, we say San Diego County, because if you say California, moving somebody to LA is essentially what we call a parentectomy. You can’t share 50-50 custody with LA. So that really depends what the impact is.
If it’s a 15-minute drive, it’s not going to be that big a deal. If it’s a 30, 40, 60 traffic, that could be a bigger deal. And so you would go into a court, you’d represent that parent who’s saying, I don’t want my kids moving to LA or moving to Orange County.
I was never told about it. He’s decided to pick the kids and just go. You would argue that in a court, I guess.
Is that the case? Well, parents share joint legal custody. So when it comes to the selection of school, doctors, starting mental health services, getting braces, these are decisions that should be made that are expected, ordered, required to be made jointly. Even if you two can’t get along, it doesn’t mean you get to make unilateral decisions.
So the selection of a school, if it’s done unilaterally, is not taken very well by the judges. And what’s the repercussion? What does a judge decide to do? Make a decision? How egregious the situation is. If a parent really is trying to alienate the other parent, a judge may consider changing custody, changing visitation.
A judge may consider giving one parent sole legal custody with respect to that one issue. That one gets to decide school. But it has to be shown to be an egregious situation.
Again, what the offending parent is trying to accomplish with what they’re doing. I imagine this time right now, literally in this week, two weeks we’re in right now, beginning of September, I would suspect that a lot of these complimentary 30-minute sessions that you so generously offer are filled with questions about parental rights. Is that a reasonable thing to consider? Yeah.
I mean, we’ve talked about how throughout this process we get calls about, do I have to share during COVID? Do we still have to follow the same schedule during COVID? What happens if? But a lot of people also call because they have no idea about the system or the process or what is joint legal custody versus physical custody. They have basic questions about what does this all mean? Because no matter how many times you and I speak, it’s still legalese. And that’s not as much as I try to simplify it and make it understandable for everybody out there.
It still has certain legal words that people need explanation or I was told that. I get a lot of that. One of my friends who went through and had the exact same told me this.
So we don’t have any expectations. Bonnie, what does custody mean? The term, it sounds like a legal, talk about legalese. So we argue, I have custody, I have custody, but we’re talking about the wellbeing, the heart, the spirit, the future of a child’s life.
What does custody mean? Well, there’s two of those. There’s legal custody, which is the right as a parent, a fundamental right to make decisions regarding your minor children. That’s your fundamental right as a parent.
Most cases result in a joint legal custody situation where both parents are deemed to be fit parents. The court system assumes you’re fit unless we have to decide some other issue. But so once they’re fit parents, you are usually given joint legal custody, which means you both get to make these decisions, health, safety, welfare, education for your children, religion, all of that.
You get to make those decisions jointly. Physical custody is where your kid lays his head at night. So the timeshare, some parents have a 50-50 timeshare where they share their children equally.
Some parents have a uneven timeshare where their child spends most of the time with most of the week with one parent, maybe weekends with the other parent. That is physical custody. That’s where the kid physically is.
And during that time period, that parent is responsible for the child. And for two people who have seemed fit to essentially divorce for whatever the reason, however, whatever difficulties took place in that relationship, these people are expected now to put all that aside and somehow put the best interests of the children first. Yes.
You had these children. Nobody told you to have these children. Nobody put a gun to your head and said procreate.
You created life. Yes. You are expected to be mature and reasonable adults and co-parent your children.
Yes. Does it happen? No. Does it happen all the time? No.
Do people do that? Yes. We have very successful people who recognize and sometimes it starts out rocky and then they get it and they realize and they get better at it. Like anything else, it’s an emotional rollercoaster when you’re breaking up a family.
So in the beginning, you’re a lot more emotionally charged and you’re probably really bad at co-parenting. And then you get better at it. I mean, the court system even provides courses.
There’s kids turn, parents turn. These are all things that you can go online onto the court website and there are resources and you can take classes online, in person. Well, I guess now not in person, but online and figure out some coping mechanisms.
Nobody’s saying because you take a parenting skill, you’re a bad parent. Sometimes you take a parenting course because it’s really hard to deal with somebody else who doesn’t see the world the way you do. And maybe you just need a different method of communication.
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You and your team have decades and decades, vast experience, in-depth resources and experience of marital dissolution, post-divorce matters. In our next episode of Family Law Matters, let’s continue with this. You mentioned the term alienation.
That’s a hot buzzword. Lots of parents are interested in, well, he or she is turning this one against me. And they toss around that parent alienation word so frequently.
Perhaps in our next edition of Family Law Matters, you can get into that a bit. Sure. You run that show, so no worries, doctor.
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Okay. I want to thank everyone for being with us for this edition of Family Law Matters with Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, founder, managing partner of Primus Family Law Group. Bonnie, if people want to be in touch, how do they get in touch with you? They can reach us at 619-574-8000.
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And then they can reach us at www.primusfamilylaw.com. You can also write in your questions to support, that’s S-U-P-P-O-R-T at primusfamilylaw.com.