The Legal Issues 153
meetings, who takes the kids to church or to the pediatrician,
who coaches the Little League team, etc.
• Personal history of each parent: evidence may be introduced
as to each parent’s mental health, morality, intelligence, edu-
cation, career, religion, criminal record, history of violence
or substance abuse, etc.
• Child-rearing attitudes: which parent has the highest work-
ing knowledge of child-development principles, stability of
residence, etc. One absolutely critical key issue that becomes
incredibly important in contested custody cases is the court’s
effort to maintain the existing status quo. This singularly vital
status quo issue is a lot more crucial than many clients ini-
tially recognize.All too frequently I will get a call from a woman who says:
“Things got absolutely horrible with my husband about six
months ago. We were fighting all the time and I wanted to keep
things mellow in front of the kids. So I left the house in order to
calm things down, and I moved in with my parents. My husband
wouldn’t let me take the kids with me. I was afraid he was going
to hit me. I’d been reading the paper about all this spousal vio-
lence. I didn’t want to be another statistic. But now I want to go
back and try to get custody of my kids.”
My reply to this poor woman is: “Oh God, I wish you had
called me six months ago. You certainly should have talked to a
lawyer before you ever moved out.” Now the status quo may be
perceived to have shifted such that the kids may at least appear to
have become more closely bonded with dad in the interim. After
all, dad and the kids are all still in the same house, but now mom
has absented herself from the household to at least some degree.
The prejudicial aftereffects of these initial separation periods may
seem a bit unjust, but the determinative importance of maintain-
ing the status quo cannot be stressed strongly enough.
Changed circumstances can change custody. Unlike the property
division aspects of divorce cases, which are pretty much fixed
in granite at the time of the divorce itself, any issues relating to
kids (such as custody, child support, the children’s education or
medical needs, etc.) are always subject to the ongoing jurisdiction