Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Re: Citizenship and Child Custody

A parent's citizenship has zero bearing on whether they can be awarded primary residential custody because it has nothing to do with the factors set out by statute for a court to use to determine who should be the primary residential parent.

However, if I may make a leap of logic on your question and address legal presence, that is a different story. Specifically, if one parent has legal immigration status and another does not, then it is not as clear what can or will happen, especially where the parent without legal status would otherwise be awarded primary residential custody.

There is confusion and non-uniformity from what I have heard from various colleagues about how judges in different counties are handling situations with a parent without legal status. In western Washington, to my knowledge, most courts are trying to say let's keep family law and immigration enforcement separate. Some even prohibit ICE from entering the building to enforce removal or deportation orders. That said, the parent without papers does take some chance when appearing in court, that perhaps an ICE officer may be there or outside the courthouse waiting for them, however unlikely that may be.

Overall, before we get to a parent's citizenship, which is really irrelevant to how they parent, the Court will go over who has primarily taken care of the kids, who works and has no time for them, who takes them to the doctor, to the soccer and ballet practice, etc. In other words, who has done most of the parenting and would be best suited to continue doing so to allow for as little disruption in the children's lives as possible?