From Collaborative Agreements to Complex Child Custody Disputes
Whether you’re working out a parenting schedule together or facing a court dispute over when and how you can see your children, custody decisions can affect everyday life for your family.
The attorneys at Camille Patti & Associates can help you understand the options, discuss what matters most to your family, and prepare for the next step.
Let our New Orleans child custody attorneys help you formalize a custody arrangement, modify an existing order, address serious safety concerns, or navigate complex jurisdictional disputes.
Whether your child custody issues are just beginning or you have a history of disputes with the other parent, Camille Patti & Associates can help.
With decades of combined legal experience, our New Orleans child custody attorneys handle the full spectrum of custody matters.
Our attorneys can assist with:
We review your circumstances and goals, explain the available custody options, and help you understand what each approach may involve.
Not every family wants a courtroom battle. We also work with parents seeking a collaborative resolution to their custody disputes.
Yes! If you and the parent of your child can communicate and negotiate in good faith, you may be able to establish a custody arrangement without litigating every issue. Even if you and your children’s other parent are having difficulty coming to agreements on your own, the attorneys at Camille Patti and Associates can help you settle custody disagreements without litigation and with minimal acrimony.
Parents who can work together can tailor a custody judgment to suit their family’s unique needs. Custody judgments often include provisions on parenting time, holiday and vacation schedules, school decisions, sharing of information, extracurricular activities, and other practical issues that commonly arise in a co-parenting relationship.
An informal custody arrangement may work for a while, but it can create problems when circumstances change. Consent judgments are always modifiable with the mutual consent of the parties to the judgment, but a good consent judgment provides structure for parents to fall back on if they find themselves in a situation where they have parenting disagreements.
A consent custody judgment is always modifiable upon a showing of a material change in circumstance and that a proposed modification is in the best interest of the child. Common reasons for modification include a proposed move more than 75 miles away by one parent, one or both parents not following an existing order, and changed circumstances resulting from the natural changes accompanying a child aging.
Our New Orleans child custody attorneys can help you identify the issues your custody agreement should address, negotiate terms with the other parent or their attorney, and prepare the appropriate documentation.
Despite your best efforts, you and the parent of your child may not be able to reach an agreement on custody matters.
If this happens, our New Orleans child custody attorneys will follow a structured approach to keep the process moving forward.
This often includes:
1. Understanding the dispute
We begin by learning the circumstances surrounding your family and what you want to accomplish.
Particularly complex cases may require additional meetings to allow us to clarify the facts, identify priorities, and discuss possible responses from the other party.
2. Examining the evidence
We review existing judgments, communications, records, and other available evidence before preparing initial pleadings.
We also assess what the evidence supports, what remains disputed, and what additional information may be needed before moving forward.
3. Developing your legal strategy
Our attorneys evaluate the legal options available based on your circumstances and the evidence.
We’ll explain these options to you in plain English, along with any foreseeable pitfalls and practical considerations that you may want to know.
4. Beginning the legal process
Your contested case will likely begin with a petition or motion, followed by service on the opposing party.
Depending on the issues involved, discovery may be necessary. This process can include gathering additional evidence, filing written discovery requests, issuing subpoenas for records or testimony, and conducting depositions.
5. Prepare for court
We explore settlement whenever a workable agreement is possible. If negotiations fail, our attorneys prepare to present your position and supporting evidence to the court.
Camille Patti & Associates will provide the guidance you need, explain the consequences of each decision, and ensure you’re thoroughly prepared for whatever situation arises.
While there are a number of specific laws that Louisiana courts look to, ultimately the best interests of a child is the governing principle of every child custody decision the courts make.
Under Louisiana Civil Code Article 132, courts generally award joint custody when parents cannot agree, subject to domestic-violence provisions and the child’s best interests.
Additionally, under Louisiana Civil Code Article 134, the court considers the family’s circumstances and the evidence relevant to the child’s welfare.
Louisiana courts consider relevant factors that may include:
The court may also consider the child’s reasonable preference, if the child is sufficiently mature to express one.
Joint custody is preferred by courts when the parents do not agree, but there are limited circumstances that require an award of sole custody to one parent, primarily when the other parent has a history of committing family violence against any member of the family.
Additionally, while 50-50 custody “shall” be awarded by a court if it’s in the child’s best interest, as determined by the best interest factors, courts still have the ultimate authority to determine what is in a child’s best interest if parties cannot otherwise agree. Under Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:335, physical custody generally must be shared equally unless the court determines that equal sharing is not feasible or in the child’s best interests.
Court-ordered custody orders are required to designate a ‘domiciliary parent,’ who has primary decision-making authority unless the order provides otherwise. Major decisions may be reviewed by the court. Consent judgments also commonly designate a domiciliary parent. However, the domiciliary designation is still subject to that parent’s duty to meaningfully confer on decisions for the child. It is only if the parents cannot agree that a domiciliary parent can make the ultimate decision. Abuse of the domiciliary designation, or a regular failure to confer with a co-parent, can result in a parent being stripped of their domiciliary designation.
Our New Orleans child custody lawyers can help identify which factors matter most in your case and develop the evidence to present to the court.
As life changes, you may need to request a change to child custody orders. There is a significant incentive for parties to consent on custody issues, as consent custody judgments are significantly easier to modify than court-ordered or “considered” decrees.
Consent judgments are always modifiable upon a showing of a material change in circumstance and that a proposed change is in the best interest of the child. Meanwhile, for a considered decree entered within the past five years, Article 138 requires proof that the advantages of changing custody substantially outweigh the likely harm to the child, or that continuing the current order would itself be so harmful as to justify modification. The first alternative requires clear and convincing evidence.
After five years have passed from a considered decree, and in other cases, Article 138 addresses a material change in circumstances affecting the child’s welfare and whether modification is in the child’s best interests.
Material changes in circumstance can include you or the other parent of your child having a significant change in work or living arrangements, concerns about the child’s welfare, or the existing schedule having become impractical.
Our New Orleans child custody attorneys review the existing order, the evidence, and the history of the case to assess whether a modification is legally available.
Our attorneys will evaluate your case for modification and help you present your case in the way to best persuade the court that your proposed modifications are warranted.
Even though you have a current custody order, you may be struggling to get the other parent to follow it.
If this is the case, Camille Patti & Associates can help. We’ll examine the order and available evidence to help you choose the appropriate enforcement procedure.
Depending on the facts, our attorneys can help you:
Let our New Orleans child custody attorneys help you get your child custody order enforced.
Your child custody dispute can become even more complicated when your child has lived in multiple states, the other parent has relocated, or courts in different states have issued conflicting or successive orders.
The first step is usually determining which state has jurisdiction—the authority to make or modify a custody determination. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA) provides rules for resolving these interstate questions. The UCCJEA also addresses enforcement of qualifying child custody orders issued in another state.
In order to determine enforcement and jurisdiction under the UCCJEA, our child custody lawyers will need to examine the procedural history, evaluate an existing out-of-state judgment, and identify the appropriate steps to seek recognition or enforcement, which can include filing to make an out of state judgment enforceable in Louisiana, or asking the court’s to make a determination as to which court in which state has jurisdiction under the UCCJEA.
Interstate custody disputes are usually lengthy and emotionally intense. With their experience handling complex UCCJEA matters, the attorneys at Camille Patti & Associates can help you navigate these issues in the most streamlined way possible.
Custody disputes involving domestic violence or child abuse raise urgent safety concerns alongside complicated court proceedings.
For instance, you may need help to handle multiple legal proceedings, address safety concerns, preserve relevant evidence, seek protective relief, or respond to a Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) investigation.
Under Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:364, the Louisiana Post-Separation Family Violence Relief Act, a parent with a qualifying history of family violence, domestic abuse, or child sexual abuse shall not be awarded either joint or sole custody until they have completed a qualifying Batterer’s Intervention Program, any other court-ordered treatment, and can show why an award of joint or sole custody is now in a child’s best interest.
Whether that presumption applies, and what relief is available, depends on the evidence and the court’s findings. A person found to have committed one act of family violence that resulted in serious injury, or two or more instances of family violence, can be found to have a history of perpetrating family violence.
Our attorneys have extensive experience applying the Louisiana Post-Separation Family Violence Relief Act and can help you address the overlapping custody, safety, and procedural issues that result from family violence, including related protective-order matters and DCFS investigations.
We also represent parents responding to allegations of abuse or unfitness. Our attorneys review the evidence, explain the applicable legal standards, and help clients understand their options.
Camille Patti began her practice as an LSBA Legal Innovators for Tomorrow (LIFT) fellow, providing pro bono legal representation to domestic violence survivors.
Additionally, Attorney Olivia Marks served as a student clinician at the Domestic Violence Clinic at Tulane University.
Of Counsel Evelyn Amoah Bryant spent approximately ten years working with domestic violence survivors at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.
Our attorneys also have experience representing children as court-appointed attorneys for children in contentious custody cases and cases with allegations of domestic violence.
Our attorneys can review the evidence of abuse, explain your legal options, and assess whether related proceedings or protective measures need attention.
The following interstate custody matter illustrates how our firm used Louisiana enforcement procedures to address a complicated dispute.
Our client’s problem
Our client, a non-parent relative, came to us about ten or eleven months into a difficult interstate custody case. More than two years prior, this client had been awarded custody in a Child in Need of Care (CINC) proceeding that was later determined to be null. When the CINC proceeding was nullified, the child’s biological mother took custody of the child, who had been living in another state for two years, and returned to Louisiana. Despite having previously petitioned the court in the other state to issue custody orders, once that out of state court determined that our client should have temporary custody of the child pending further proceedings, the child’s mother then reversed course and petitioned a Louisiana court that had previously issued custody judgments to assert jurisdiction under the UCCJEA. Meanwhile, she was in contempt of multiple orders from the other state, which could not be enforced until the Louisiana court settled the issue of jurisdiction.
How Camille Patti & Associates helped
Our child custody attorneys reviewed the entire procedural history and pursued enforcement of out-of-state custody orders in Louisiana.
Within a month, our attorneys secured judgment in Louisiana ceding jurisdiction to the other state and made the “foreign” (out of state) judgments executory in Louisiana, also obtaining a civil warrant authorizing law enforcement to return the child to our client.
When the child and her mother could not be located by local law enforcement, firm employees managed to find the mother at a courthouse and coordinate with police and sheriff’s deputies to find the child. Law enforcement issued an alert, and the child was found less than 12 hours later, bringing a 12 month odyssey to a happy end for our client and the child.
The result
The child was returned to our client’s custody in another state. Our firm had been retained about ten to eleven months into the matter and obtained Louisiana enforcement relief within approximately a month.
The mother was also charged with multiple offenses related to her refusal to comply with the court orders.
What this means for you
This case shows why technical questions about jurisdiction and enforcement can matter in a custody dispute, how careful review of existing orders can help an attorney determine the available steps, and also how the attorneys at Camille Patti and Associates go above and beyond to help the children at the center of complicated custody disputes.
Camille Patti & Associates represents parents in New Orleans and surrounding Louisiana parishes, which include:
We also handle child custody disputes that aren’t confined to one location. For example, you may live in one parish while the other parent lives elsewhere, or an existing judgment may require attention after a parent relocates.
Our attorneys evaluate where the case belongs and which orders or procedural requirements must be addressed before recommending the next steps.
Our family law attorneys can also address related child support, divorce, spousal support, or protective-order matters when they arise alongside a custody dispute.
Whether you need to formalize an agreement you and your co-parent have reached on your own, or you need help negotiating a custody agreement, changing an existing order, responding to a contested custody petition, or resolving a complicated interstate dispute, Camille Patti & Associates will explain your legal options and identify the best path forward.
Speak with our experienced New Orleans child custody lawyers about your circumstances and your concerns.
At your consultation, we can discuss your situation, the existing orders and available records, and the legal options that may be appropriate for your family.
Schedule a consultation today by calling 504.321.3364 or use our contact form.
