Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Re: custody

If there is no court order granting custody to your wife, you and she have equal rights to custody and/or visitation with the children. If the children want to see you, they should certainly be able to. I would recommend that you file a Complaint, in your Circuit Court, for visitation or for custody, whichever you want. In the meantime, she has no right to prevent you seeing them, but I would strongly recommend that you not get into a brawl trying to take them away by force. I would also recommend that you not try to make the children the center of a tug-of-war while trying to exercise your rights. The courts do not like that.

Re: custody

Unfortunately she can until you get a court order for custody or a court order for visitation. I would immediately file a petition for either custody or visitation. The courts liberally grant visitation absent allegations of abuse or neglect. Also consider this, the longer you wait to file for visitation the more she (or more likely her attorney) will argue that you never cared enough to visit with the children. I see these cases all the time in which the father really wants to see kids, spends years trying to appease mom, and then when father finally files for visitation and mom gets on the stands she says "I've never denied visitation. He just never showed an interest or he abandoned the kids." So please, if you want to see the kids file now! Good luck.