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Specialty tag(s): Child Custody

How to Win Your Custody Case in Texas

Jeff Domen | January 21, 2022

How to Win A Custody Case the Right Way in Texas

Sometimes you define a win in getting custody. Sometimes you define a win in changing the client’s life for the better, and helping them navigate the very difficult situation we call family law. But at Goranson Bain Ausley, your needs, and desires are going to be discussed and analyzed so that you come up with a path and a game plan so that you can reach your desired outcome.

Have a Gameplan

. When you talk to successful people, they will all tell you they got to where they are because they had a clearly defined game plan and a goal that they wanted to accomplish. Winning a child custody case is no different. If you want to win, you need a very clearly defined gameplan so that you can accomplish your goal, and you need a lawyer who’s going to go through those costs, both financially and cost emotionally, so you can make the best decision to create a game plan that helps you reach your goal. That game plan might include depositions, it might include discovery, it might include a contested trial, or a contested jury trial at the end of your case. But as long as you know the cost, and you know the benefits that you might obtain, that’s how you make informed decisions to reach your goal.

Focus on Yourself

After you have a clearly defined gameplan to reach your objectives of winning custody in Texas, it’s important to have a paradigm shift and focus on how good of a parent you can be instead of focusing on how bad the other parent is. Spend your time in front of the judge and the jury showing how good of a relationship you have with your children, showing the judge and the jury how you are able to co-parent with the other parent. In fact, showing the judge and the jury that you love your children enough to put their needs ahead of your distrust, or your frustration with the other parent, that is the paradigm shift that judges and juries are looking for to help them determine who should win a custody case in Texas.

Having and Presenting the Facts

Family law gives you the ability as a litigant to create your own evidence that you’re going to show the judge and the jury. In criminal law, criminal lawyers are stuck with the facts that their client brings them. However, in family law, we have an ongoing opportunity to create our own facts that we’re going to show the judge, we’re going to be able to show the judge how we communicate with the other side through text messages, through emails, and through all of our actions of when we choose to put the children first instead of pursuing our own goals. This evidence that you are using right now is going to be extremely important when you end up in front of that judge and jury. If you come into a custody case with bad facts, you have the opportunity to take steps to make improvements from the bad choices you’ve made in the past. If you’ve had an issue with drinking, you have the opportunity to go and show the judge how you’re taking steps to become sober. If you’ve made choices in the past to work more and put your family on the back burner, you have an opportunity to show the judge how you made a choice and you made a change to put your children above and more important than your work. You have the choice to show the judge that you have changed your previous actions of putting work first, and now you’re choosing to put your children first. So creating your own evidence in the form of emails, text messages, and your personal choices is what you can do to help yourself win a custody case in Texas.

Prioritize Your Children

At the end of the day, as you continue to work your game plan, you have worked on becoming a better parent and the net result is that your children are healthy and happier because of it. You have the benefit of having a win-win situation where you win the custody case and you also end up with healthy children with a healthy parent who focused on putting their children first and co-parenting with the other side. What better result could you ask for in a very difficult situation?

Look at this process through the lens of your children. When you give children love in the way that they receive it, you have an opportunity to create a relationship with your children that can last a lifetime. So often as parents, we love our children by working hard for them and giving them things that we think they want. And at the end of the day, all children want is you and your time and your affection. Children spell love: T-I-M-E. So, when you’re thinking through and working through, what kind of evidence do I want to share with the judge and jury? Think of it in the form of time and loving on your children.

To learn more about how you can increase your chances of winning custody in the state of Texas, please contact Jeff Domen at 217-473-9696.