Montgomery County Men’s Child Custody Lawyers Committed to Protecting Fathers’ Visitation and Custody Rights

The impact divorce and parental separation have on children is tremendous. The impact is made worse when children are separated from their fathers unnecessarily. The father-child relationship is as important as the mother-child relationship, but our courts don’t always seem to agree. The goal of our courts and laws regarding child custody is to be gender neutral. However, men and women typically play different roles within the family structure. Women often assume the more nurturing role when it comes to caring for children. This role often overshadows the father’s role, which tends to be a little more demanding on children.

If a court is not educated on the importance of the dad’s relationship with the children, that relationship is often overshadowed by the Mom’s more nurturing relationship. A nurturing relationship is not necessarily an empowering relationship and is often the opposite. Each relationship contributes to the development of a confident, functional adult, and the absence of one relationship may result in a less functional and confident adult.

It is important to preserve your relationship with your children and NOT allow yourself to be marginalized in your children’s lives. At Paré & Associates, LLC (formerly the Law Office of Alice Paré), we will defend your custodial rights to your children. Collectively, we have more than 50 years of experience helping fathers get the best possible outcome for their child custody cases. Please call us at 301-962-2492 and schedule a 15-minute telephone consultation.

What Types of Child Custody Are There in Maryland?

There are two types of custody in Maryland. The first is physical custody. Physical custody is concerned with where the children will live. The second type of custody is legal custody. Determining each type of custody involves different considerations and has different ramifications. We can explain child custody to you and help you decide what child custody arrangements are best for you and your children. We can help you plan how to achieve the desired custody results.

• Physical Custody – Physical custody is the child’s living arrangements. A child can live primarily with one parent or can live equal time with each parent.
• Shared Physical Custody – This is when the parents share physical custody of their children. The sharing arrangements can vary from an equal 50/50 arrangement to one parent having fewer days than the other. It is no longer considered shared physical custody when one parent has the children less than 35% of the time. If physical custody is shared, then the child support obligation is adjusted to accommodate the sharing. For young children, when a long separation from a parent is harder on the child, the week is often split. A common time-share arrangement is where the children stay with one parent overnight Monday and Tuesday, overnight with the other parent Wednesday and Thursday, and then on alternate weekends, which are overnight Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. With older children, when longer separations are fine, the concern is that the children should not have to transition as much. In these circumstances, the share arrangement is often alternating weeks.
• Sole Physical Custody – Sole physical custody is when one parent has the children more than 65% of the time, or more than 237 days a year. For example, if the children are with a parent on alternate weekends, the total number of overnights in a year is less than 128. In that case, the other parent technically has sole physical custody.
• Legal Custody – Legal custody is the decision-making authority regarding the children. Decision-making authority includes medical, educational, and religious decisions. The most common type of legal custody is joint legal custody. In joint legal custody arrangements, the parents make the important decisions affecting the children together. Joint legal custody requires that the parents can work together and reach decisions involving the children.

How Can a Montgomery County Child Custody Lawyer Help Me?

At Paré & Associates, LLC, our Montgomery County law attorneys help our clients through many different types of emotionally-charged cases, including child custody and divorce. We focus our practice on men in divorce, and we are committed to helping you counter the gender bias in America’s divorce courts. Call Paré & Associates, LLC at 301-962-2492 today.