Blog Archives
What Happens During a New Jersey Child Custody Evaluation?
If a previous custody resolution process like an assessment or mediation yields no solution, the court may order a full child custody evaluation at the parents’ expense. Parents may agree to a single evaluator or each retain their own separately, and the court may also order a neutral evaluator.
It is important to your family’s happiness that you succeed in navigating custody with your child’s other parent.
New Jersey Resources and Links for Families and Children
Resources for Families
Free Legal Forms
Healthy Children
Case Law: Cases and Codes
Nurse/Family Partnership
American Academy of Pediatrics
National Alliance on Mental Illness
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists
When parents separate, families find help at the Law Offices of Jef Henninger, Esq.
How Do You Prove a Parent to Be Unfit?
Courts distinguish marital faults from misconduct that indicates an unfit parent. In other words, proof of a horrible spouse does not automatically deem that spouse an unfit parent, and seeking custody doesn’t have to eliminate parenting time. Although no one is legally required to parent perfectly, the court can decide that the dangerously imperfect are unfit.
Only specific criteria will convince a New Jersey family court to declare a parent to be unfit.
Toms River Child Custody Lawyers help client regain unsupervised visitation
Our Toms River Child Custody Lawyers helped a client regain her parental rights today in Ocean County Superior Court. The client was facing a tough DYFS case at the same time her divorce case was going on. As a result of her cases being mismanaged by a prior attorney, her case was a total mess. In fact, these cases appeared hopeless from the surface. However, when our lawyers see a tough case, we get tougher.worked non-stop to fight against the non-stop allegations from her husband, the law guardian and DYFS. The judge was a second away from putting the client in in-patient but we prevented it from happening.continued to fight hard and at the next court appearance, we got the DYFS case dismissed and as a result, the client’s visitation was no longer supervised.
Ocean County Child Custody Lawyer helps client regain visitation rights
J.H.
Ocean County
In this case, our client (the father) had a vindictive ex call DYFS (now DCPP) on him and make false allegations of child abuse and neglect. Unfortunately, the client did not call us when dealing with the DYFS investigation. Like many people, he felt that he didn’t need a lawyer because he didn’t do anything wrong. He wasn’t using drugs so why not take a drug test? After passing several tests, he failed one. He swore that he didn’t use any drugs so we made sure that he took a hair follicle test. We then worked with DYFS to close out their investigation once we were able to show them that this was a false positive. We also made sure that DYFS sent over a report to the court. The timing of everything was very close but the court received everything the day before the motion date. As a result, the mother’s motion to suspend parenting time was denied and our client’s visitation rights were restored just in time for the holidays.
Holding the other parent in contempt of court for interfering with parenting time in NJ
A contempt proceeding should be brought under R. 1:10-2 against the other parent for interfering with parenting time. Under R. 1:10-3, monetary sanctions are available. Often times, lawyers will file a motion to enforce litigant’s rights and simply ask the Court to verbally scold the other parent. I view these case as dealing with any other bully. The best way to get a bully to back down is to stand up for yourself and punch them in the mouth. Clearly, assaulting the other parent is not advisable but standing up for yourself in court and using the court to deliver a serious blow to them will often get them to back down.
Now I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why the other side will not listen to any court order. In fact, I find it odd that people would call a lawyer only to tell the lawyer that the other side cannot be defeated. Why call the lawyer in the first place? Quite often, the prospective client has handled the case on their own or did not have an aggressive lawyer in the past. I cannot think of any case that our firm has handled where we could not help our client get parenting time unless the parent was involved with DYFS. Even with serious DYFS allegations, we can almost always get the client some visitation.
Thus, if you want to enforce your parenting time and teach the other side that you will not back down, speak to one of our tough, smart lawyers about filing a motion to hold the other parent in contempt.
NJ DYFS Allegations
DYFS Allegations in New Jersey
DYFS allegations can seriously impact your parental rights. DYFS (now known as DCPP) can order you to have supervised parenting time or even worse, they can remove the children from your home and place them in foster care. Most people don’t realize that they need a New Jersey DYFS lawyer until its too late. The time to call a New Jersey DYFS lawyer is the first time you hear anything about DYFS. Waiting to see what happens until you call an attorney could cause a ton of problems and cost you more money. Hiring an attorney to help make DYFS get out of your life is often cost effective compared to a full blown DYFS case in court.
What most people don’t realize is that dealing with DYFS is a very specilized area of law and most family law attorney, even the good ones, have little to no experience with DYFS. Fortunately, some of them will be honest and tell you that while others will not. At the Law Offices of Jef Henninger, Esq, we are one of the few law firms that have experience in both custody and DYFS matters. There is no reason for you to hire two lawyers! We can do it all for you. Call our aggressive New Jersey DYFS lawyers today to discuss your case.
Bergen County Divorce Lawyer helps client get custody of child
A.L.
Bergen County
Our client was the father of the child in this case. In addition to a divorce case, there was also a pending DYFS case. The client fired his lawyer and then hired us. Within just a few months we resolved the DYFS case in his favor. Through the DYFS case, we were then able to get him custody of the child. With custody out of the way, we quickly resolved the divorce case as well. Needless to say, the client was very happy that he came over to us.
NJ Child Custody Attorneys 