Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia
I am asking this for my partner. He and his ex-wife are divorced. There was a court order after the divorce for visitations for him to see his son. She refused to honor that court order after a few visitations. Until recently, my partner had no recourse. I was able to help him take her to court in 2013 in January and was successfully able to get the visitations modified and enforced.
Ever since that time, his son and he have been bonding and getting closer but she still refuses to compromise to allow them any time beyond the strict limits of the visitation, will not allow the son to visit us in our home, and tries to engender hatred and fear of his father in his son (though she fails). She has said and done some pretty horrific things to try and tear them apart but so far as she has done is alienate her own son. He is no longer even living with her and is in fact living with his grandparents.
He tells us the things she does and says to him and to us, they seem to be emotionally and psychologicaly damaging. She is very religious and has even went so far to tell his son that his son is demonically possessed for showing love and affection for his father and that if he shows any affection at all, he is punished. He has to go out of the house to just make a phone call to his father.
We want to avoid a custody battle but at this point, it seems like anything and everything else has failed. We want to take primary custody from her. We are economically able to support him and have support from our housing director and family. We even have a big enough home. How should we go about requesting primary custody before too much damage is done?
The child is 15 years old now. We live in Virginia but he, the son, lives with his mother in West Virginia. Please help. Also, I have audio recordings of the son telling us the horrific things his mother says and does. he does not know they were recorded. Can they be used as evidence?
1 Answer from Attorneys
The first question is which state has jurisdiction. i.e., where was the final divorce order entered. If it was West Virginia, that's where the matter must be handled.
In either state, a court is likely to give a considerable amount of weight to what a child 15 years of age wants; if he prefers to be with his father, and the father is not somehow an improper custodian, it is likely that the court would award custody to the father.
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