Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Re: family law

I'll start with the easy part of your question: as a general rule, there are no "grandparent's rights" in Washington when it comes to child custody. There is however a third party custody statute that allows third parties to challenge for custody, but a prerequisite is that both parents are someone unavailable (for example, in prison) or unfit (for example, have domestic violence convictions that were very recent) to take care of the child in question.

The forms can be obtained at www.wa.courts.gov. If you are getting into a divorce and you are considering doing it yourself because you cannot afford an attorney, then at least try the Northwest Justice Project or search Google for low income legal help. On the other hand, if you can afford one, do yourself a huge favor and get one now, before you mess it up so badly on your own that by the time you need to hire one, it will cost a lot more money than if you just hired a lawyer in the first place.

As for your questions about abandonment and alimony, I could write a book about each of those. For now, suffice it to say, alimony is called "spousal maintenance" in Washington. Usually, whether to grant it is based upon how long the parties have been married (the longer the marriage, the higher the odds of getting it) and how much and for how long to get it depend on the income of each party, the ability of each party to earn money afterward, and the need of the party asking for it versus the ability of the other party to pay for it. It is a very fact sensitive matter, so each case is really different.

Abandonment . . . I'd say repost a question with some facts so that I or another lawyer on Law Guru can better answer your questions related to abandonment.