a child that wants to live with the non cutodial parent

[joacqua]

how do you deal with this is it ok my stepdaughter who is 12 wants to live me & her dad and not with the mom her brother will stay with the mom  we want things to stay calm but I know the bio will flip out  how do we go about this.

[Sherry1]

nor should she!  If your DH feels he should have custody and CP deesn't feel that way, he will have to hire lawyer and it will be very expensive for a custody battle.

[CustodyIQ]

If the 12 year old has legitimate reasons for preferring your home over the mother's home, the father must decide if those reasons are significant enough to initiate a change in custody.

Some valid reasons for changing custody would be:

-- Mom is always drunk and doesn't care about the kids

-- Mom's boyfriend is always drunk and beats/molests the kids

-- 12 year old doesn't have a private room or any quiet location to do homework or sleep at night in mom's house

To be taken seriously by a judge, I think you'll have to show some significant shortcoming of the mother's home that would be resolved by the child living with dad.

If you can't show that, a 12 year old's feelings (with no valid reason other than "I like it better over there") will not be considered significant, given that a pre-adolescent girl's feelings may change on a monthly basis.

If you and the father are not aware of the roots of what's going on, you may wish to take the child to a therapist to help unravel what's causing the child to feel this way.

That therapist, in turn, can testify to the court if needed.

[Sherry1]

both parents (if joint custody) give written authorization.  I seroiusly doubt they will find a well qualified psychologist that will see a child without CP's permission.

[joacqua]

thanks for the respnses it is very confusing for me being the stepmom i feel a child belongs with teh mom but if she says she is unhappy there and there is no abuse  should she still have to stay?  I spoke to the bio and I told her my opinon I feel that sd is just wanting to be with dh more and that is why she is saying this I think that they can spend more time together with her moving in.

[Sherry1]

get their way.  Unless there is documentable abuse, neglect or drug use, you would have to file for custody of SD.  Maybe you could arrange for SD to spend more time with DH without filing for custody?

[daddymccoy21]

Whew, All I can say is that I went through the same thing.  My new wife and I are JUST about to get custody of my daughter, mainly because we had a psych evaluation done. In the evaluation, it showed that my daughter had the highest level of affection for myself and the stepmother.

I guess I would suggest that you ask the judge for an evedince code 730 evaluation. It can be costly, mine was $4,500.  But well worth it in the end.

Also, I recently signed up for this ebook program that helped me get all this done. I bought it on ebay - it was called Family Law Secrets Revealed. I believe the website for the book is at http://www.familylawsecrets.com