Legal Question in Family Law in Texas

My daughter is 6 and we live in Texas. Her father lives 3 hours away and only calls maybe once a month or less and typically only makes the effort to see her every 4-6 months. He is about 6 thousand behind in child support and is already on probation for lack of payment. He never pays 50% of her high medical bills (asthma) or gets involved in her life. He currently has limited visitation because he never fulfilled the stipulation in the paperwork that said he had to follow a modified visitation schedule for six months before getting full standard visitation. I recently have learned that there are some things I CAN'T do without him because we legally have joint custody (i.e. getting her passport, collecting insurance claims money when a person hit my car and I took her to get checked out by a doctor, etc.). Do I have enough reason to get sole legal cusotdy with him still having his visitation rights based on his four year pattern of non-compliance and lack of involvement?


Asked on 12/06/16, 8:58 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Mark Dunn Mark D. Dunn

I think what you're asking about is changing from joint managing conservatorship to sole managing conservatorship.

There's not a nickel's worth of difference between the two.

You might want to take a look at chapter 161 of the Texas Family Code which has to do with termination of the parent-child relationship. If Dad has missed 12 straight months of child support payments, you can sue for termination. The downside of this is that it cuts off his child support obligation in the future.

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Answered on 12/07/16, 2:18 pm


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