Who Has Custody Of A Child If There Is No Court Order In Illinois

When parents split up they must immediately make arrangements to keep the children’s lives and schedules as stable as possible. Maintaining a consistent schedule for the children is difficult in the opening phases of a divorce. Typically, one parent disappears from the home at the initial stages of the divorce and is absent from the children’s lives until further orders are made for temporary visitation and then final custody. What happens to visitation and custody at the beginning of a divorce or parentage action before any orders are entered? It first has to be determined whether the courts even consider the parents to have any rights over the child. Determining Who Is A Parent When There Is No Court Order In Illinois If the parties are not married, the father is not deemed to have any presumptive rights until a court has adjudicated him to be the parent. To adjudicate Is to “rule on judicially” Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019). “An individual may not be adjudicated to be a parent unless the court has personal jurisdiction over the individual” 750 ILCS 46/603(b) The father will not be deemed a parent with rights until an order is issued by the court confirming they are the father. Until the unmarried father of a child declares himself the father via court order…he has no rights to that child. Declaring yourself the father is as simple as signing the Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity. “Voluntary acknowledgment. A parent-child relationship may be established voluntarily by the signing and witnessing of a voluntary acknowledgment” 750 ILCS 46/301 Mothers (due to biology) are automatically conferred rights to the child. “The parent-child relationship is established between a woman and a child by:(1) the woman having given birth to the child” 750 ILCS 46/201(a) Married parents are presumed to be the parent of the child even without a court order. “A person is presumed to be the parent of a child if:(1) the person and the mother of the child have entered into a marriage, civil union, or substantially similar legal relationship, and the child is born to the mother during the marriage, civil union, or substantially similar legal relationship” 750 ILCS 46/204(a) If the parties are married…nothing happens before an order is entered. If the parents are married, the court presumes both parents have their children’s best interests. The court won’t intercede regarding a married couple’s parenting time […]

from Russell D. Knight | Family Lawyer Chicago https://rdklegal.com/who-has-custody-of-a-child-if-there-is-no-court-order-in-illinois/