Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia

My advice is to wait until your residency is established in Virginia and file here. The reason being is that custody cases usually require more than one court date. If there is an appeal or reconsideration - you would most likely be taking more trips. If you wish to modify the custody in the future - you may be able to change the jurisdictions and have future cases take place here but if a challenge occurs - this can get expensive. In final - if the other parent relocates

out of Michigan - the jurisdiction can be very inconvenient to both - you could probably change it but expensive...need Michigan attorney and attorney for the state you live in.

No, you would file for custody in the Virginia J&DR;Court in the city or county where you reside, once you've been in the Commonwealth for the required six months.

My first question would be, do you have to file at all? Would the father of the children be willing to sign an out of court custody agreement? That's a whole lot messy and less expensive than having the court award custody.

If you can't file get him to agree to the custody then where you file really would depend on what is more convenient and where your witnesses reside. If most of your witnesses are in MI then I would file there because VA courts won't have subpoena power on MI residents. Also, your witnesses may not want to voluntarily travel here to VA.