My Fight 4 MY KIDS!

Should I Apply for Child Support/Custody?

I never married my 9 year old’s dad. Dad and I have never legally submitted paperwork for child support or custody. We have a mutual agreement on child support ($) and visiting. My son sees his dad every-other-weekend. I don’t think it is enough quality time for my son. His dad lives about 30 miles away from us. The ideal would be that dad would at least keep him one weekday a week, but he complains that it’s too far. When my son comes back home on Sundays, he’s usually late and it isn’t fair to my son to go to bed late. It is very difficult to talk to his dad. I don’t know what to do. Should I let the court decide for us?

If you now have a tacit agreement you should submit that agreement to the court and have it made an order of Custody and Support. Once you do that you can file a petition to modify the custody order (as well as the support order if you so choose) . I believe that the father should have the child every other weekend as well as one day during the week and that the child should sleep over that day. Perhaps the child can be picked up from school by the father and then taken home for dinner or they could go out for dinner. Then the father can help the child with homework and get the child to sleep and then take the child to school the next day. Then you can pick the child up from school. That way the father will not only have the child for the quality time of the weekend but will have to deal with the child during the week and will give you a break to have some time for yourself during the week too. But if you leave it up to your “mutual agreement” he’ll never agree. It would be in the “best interest of the child” so you should take the matter to the court.