When the legal matter involves your children, it is a serious matter. Child custody concerns are common in divorce, post-divorce modifications, and parenting outside of marriage. Because the stakes are high, working with an experienced child custody attorney in Arlington Heights is very well advised.Â
In Illinois, child custody is called parental responsibilities, which correlate with legal custody and parenting time and physical custody. Let’s take a closer look at how each works.
As parents, we shoulder immense responsibilities for our children, and the law addresses these via parental responsibilities, which amounts to who will be making important decisions related to your children’s upbringing, including decisions like the following:
Parental responsibilities can be shared by you and your children’s other parent. One of you can be solely responsible, or you can divide them according to the kind of decision being made. Those parenting decisions that arise on a day-to-day basis, however, are a different matter and must be made by the parent in attendance at the time.
Parenting time is a major component of child custody and relates to when the children will be with you and when they will be with their other parent. While parents devise all kinds of unique schedules when it comes to parenting time, the basic two plans include:
Because they directly affect your parental rights, child custody matters have the obvious potential to become quite heated. In your efforts to negotiate mutually agreeable child custody terms, you and your children’s other parent can attempt to find middle ground between yourselves, can turn to your respective child custody attorneys to negotiate on behalf of each of you, and can explore alternative conflict resolution (ACR) options, such as mediation. Regardless of how you arrive at a compromise, however, you will not require the court’s intervention in the matter if you are able to resolve the issue on your own. If there is a child custody issue that you are not able to resolve, however, you will need the court to make the determination for you.Â
The seasoned child custody attorneys at SAM LAW OFFICE, LLC, in Arlington Heights, Illinois, understand how challenging issues related to child custody are, and in response, we dedicate our practice to avidly defending the parental rights of clients like you. We are on your side and here to help, so please don’t wait to contact us for more information today.