Custody & Kidnapping

Are you thinking of withdrawing your custody petition because you both agree on custody now. If you have both come to an agreement about custody and visitation after you already filed, you may want to ask an attorney if s/he recommends that you both appear in court and tell the judge what you have agreed to and see if your agreement may be written up and signed by the judge so that it is a formal court order that may have to be followed by both of you. An attorney who handles custody may frequently come across a situation where one parent files a case and then during the case, the parents agree to who will get custody and who will get visitation and they “settle” the case based on those terms and so the attorney may be able to advise you on the best way to resolve a case in that way.

If you do not want to have a court order but you would rather just do it informally, you may want to ask an attorney what steps you should take to withdraw your custody petition if that’s what you want to do. However, if both you and the other parent filed petitions, an attorney may say that you may not want to withdraw yours until you are sure that s/he will also withdraw his/hers. Otherwise, if you withdraw yours and don’t show up to court and the other parent doesn’t withdraw his/hers, and s/he does show up to court, it may be possible that the other parent’s petition may be granted in your absence. Again, hopefully an attorney can suggest the best way to handle this. If you want to get some legal advice on this situation, here is a link for free and paid lawyers: {LINK}