sd wants to move in with her dad.

[stepmomof1]

 sd came to my dh this weekend and told him she had been thinking for about 4-5 months about coming to live with him. Let me give you a little back ground. Sd is 13. Her mom has always had primary/full custody. They were never married.

 She said she doesn't have but 3 friends at her school and she wants to go to the school district in this area she has a bunch of friends at this school. (we only live like 10-15 minutes from her mother but in a different district.

Where she lives, she cant go outside and play because of the neighbor hood. She is not allowed to have friends spend the night and She said her step dad talks to her bad and her mom is always in a bad mood. I told her parents cant always be in a good mood. Thats just live. She again stressed the word ALWAYS in a bad mood, making her miserable.


 So, DH said he would tell her mom that she wanted to live with him and see if they could talk and work things out and if they couldn't and she still wanted to come here he would proceed to the next step. Which I guess would be getting a Lawyer and setting up a court date. I dont believe her mother will let this go over smoothly. (I dont believe I would either)

We live in Ohio

So, I guess my question is if sd does decide she still wants to come here and it ends up in court,

1.what happens in court?
2.Will her opinion be counted in the process.
3.Is my dh just wasting his money that we dont have for nothing to come of this?

Thanks for your help,  April

[socrateaser]

>1.what happens in court?

It's like a scene from the movie, "Scanners." People's heads start exploding without any apparent reason or warning.

>2.Will her opinion be counted in the process.

Of course. That's why this is all happening.

>3.Is my dh just wasting his money that we dont have for
>nothing to come of this?

I can't tell you. Different States have different rules regarding how much weight to assign to a child's desire change primary residences. Based, on your facts, however, if the court were to assign no weight whatsoever to the child's wishes (which the court won't, but for the sake of my hypothetical, we'll say that it will), then I would tell you that you're wasting your time, because some bad words and depressed parents won't get you a custody modification.

But, given some substantial weight, and a psychological eval of the child showing that she real does want to move, then I'd say that you have a pretty good chance.

A local attorney will have a much better idea, based on experience with the local family law judges and what they typically award.