PUBLISHER’S UPDATE: Here is one of my favorites posts written by custody expert Judianne Cochran from back on September 18th, 2010! We have a ton of interesting articles in our archives of the Ohio Family Law Blog. Use our Search tool and enjoy a few oldie but goodies!
Using False Allegations In Family Law Custody Cases. Will I get A Better Position?
In recent years there has been a steady and alarming increase in the use of false allegations of vague, unsupported claims of domestic violence and even vaguer claims of child abuse, used solely in an attempt to find a shortcut to a presumed better position in custody cases.
What is more alarming is the observation that more often than not the attorneys of record for the litigants making these claims have been those unschooled in and relatively new to the family law arena, who have chosen to step outside their actual specialty and add a minor “division” of family law to their practices. Often, a new, young, unskilled associate is added to the practice to handle these family law issues.
Some of these practitioners use this mechanism so frequently that simply hearing the name of the attorney leads … Read More... “Blast From The Past: Custody Wars: My Lawyer Suggested that I Fabricate a Child Abuse Allegation!”
This is a cautionary New Year’s Resolution for all of you who are either active duty military or veterans. The resolution is to keep yourself informed and diligent regarding your military and veteran medical records and personal files Do you know what is actually in your service files? Do you know what might be missing? Do you know what might be fraudulent or inaccurate? Did you keep information on your buddies? Did you get lonely and marry in haste, or spend a weekend leave and be left unaware that your personal information was stolen from your wallet or other ID, like a copy of orders?
What do I do if I am a parent victim of parental abduction, legally known as custodial interference? While there are good laws, both federal and state, in place there is a very frustrating growing trend in not being able to get cooperation in enforcing these laws. The first, and most damaging, problem begins with the initial attempts to file a report with the police and get the child entered into the system as “missing”. Without this crucial step, the abducting parent is able to run further and hide deeper before any assistance is provided to the target parent.
There have been many laws and treaties put in place in recent years to assist in the prevention of international abduction. However, I have been seeing a new complacency in the family court system that has begun to ignore the need for strong prevention, thus further thwarting a parent’s ability to be involved with their child. Judges in many jurisdictions have been ordering that the objecting parent cooperate in obtaining passports for their children so the foreign national parent can remove the child from the country, often to non-Hague signatory countries. Even though these issues have been addressed, the laws strengthened, and the public made increasingly aware of the dangers of allowing a child to … 
There are several issues that you need to address if you have decided that you need to modify your original custody order. The first is whether your case meets the necessary criteria for modification – the primary of which is a “change of circumstance”. One thing you must understand is that this does NOT include the myth that at a certain age the child can make a choice – this is not supported by law. A child’s wishes 
Military service in itself creates the need for maintaining a status quo in regards to jurisdiction. The words “Home of Record” should be the key starting point in any custody order involving military families. During the course of a military career there will be many “current”, or temporary, addresses due to changes in assignment. It is therefore important that an initial custody order specifies that the jurisdiction will be permanently retained in the “Home of Record” where the action was first heard, unless both parties consent to a different venue.
In the last few years we have all watched the televised homecomings of military personnel returning from tours of duty to see their loved ones, more often than not children overjoyed to be in the arms of fathers and mothers once again. But what do we see of the not-too-happy homecomings where the returning parent’s outstretched arms are left empty and cold? This is the picture which should be burned into our minds each time we see a happy reunion. For each of those joyous televised feel-good sound bites there is a parent who will step into a battle more heartbreaking than the battlefield they have just left, more grievous than any physical injury they may have sustained along the way.