Custody & Kidnapping

In general, if someone is aware of a court case that was filed against him/her, s/he can still appear in court and respond to the court petition even if s/he was not properly served. The respondent in a custody case can generally file an answer/response within a certain number of days after being served. If someone was never served and the deadline for filing a response/answer has passed, s/he may need to file something different to explain to the judge that s/he never properly received service and to ask for permission to file a response. In addition to filing a response, a person can also file his/her own custody petition (often called a cross-petition).

There are some instances where an attorney may advise someone not to appear in court based on a particular legal strategy - but this is not something that someone who is pro se would likely follow. The danger in not appearing for a court date is that generally, when a respondent fails to show up for court, often times the judge will grant the petitioner the relief that s/he asked for in the petition. In a custody case, the judge may also have to be sure that the requested arrangement would be in the child’s best interest. Depending on the procedure in your state, it may be possible that the judge might do what is sometimes called an inquest (a one-sided hearing where only the petitioner testifies) to establish best interests of the child or the judge may just grant the petition based on the fact that the respondent didn’t show up. Another possibility is the judge could adjourn (postpone the case) to give the respondent another opportunity to appear and even possibly issue a warrant for the respondent to appear on the next date - again, I can’t say which if any of these possibilities will happen in your case but these are general possibilities. And although the petitioner is supposed to properly serve the respondent with the court papers prior to the court case, it is not unheard of for a petitioner to somehow falsify documents showing that the respondent was served and get an order for custody of the child. Then, the respondent would have to try to file in court to remove the default judgment and explain that s/he wasn’t properly served but there is no guarantee that the judge would remove the default judgment. You may want to talk to a lawyer to get specific advice for your particular situation. Here is a link for lawyers:LINK and here is some more information on custody in case that is useful LINK