One of my earliest blogs addressed the idea that the family court only has jurisdiction over a child’s custody for a period of 216 months—from the child’s birth to his or her emancipation at age eighteen. Ironically, the worst times to be instigating marital dissolution or custody litigation is near the beginning or end of that 216-month period.
The reason it is problematic to be instituting custody litigation for a very young child is that the child’s development is so rapid that it is difficult to fashion a long-term custodial schedule. Very young children are often breastfeeding, which literally tethers them to their mothers. Infants need frequent and constant contact with their care providers to ensure bonding; therefore, many custody schedules for very young children involve frequent transitions.
Moreover, the stress of parenting a newborn compounds the stress of custody or divorce litigation. This situational stress—and I suspect there is still a lot of undiagnosed post-partum depression that causes spouses to end their marriages when they should be seeking mental health treatment—often leads to even greater acrimony than typical family court litigation.
Further, the family court will often extend both the duration and amount of visitation as a child progresses from newborn to pre-school age. This often requires multiple hearings (sometimes multiple cases) to address that graduated visitation schedule. For all these reasons, it is best to avoid custody litigation for very young children.
At the other end of a child’s minority, litigating custody of an older but unemancipated teenager (and marital dissolutions actions will need to address that child’s custody) simply adds unnecessary complication to that marital dissolution case and unnecessary stress to that teenager’s life. Let that older child emancipate (and hopefully finish the first semester or year of college) and one doesn’t have to address custody or cause a child to spend his or her senior year of high school bouncing between homes.
As the 216 months blog notes, each month the child gets older is one less month any custody order is in effect. Litigation for a custody order that will shortly become moot wastes a parent’s financial resources.
There are obvious circumstances where custody or marital dissolution litigation needs to occur promptly despite the child’s infancy or impending emancipation. However, where one can avoid custody litigation the first few or last few years of a child’s minority, it is best to do so.
