Custody

The judge will look at many factors to decide what is in the best interest of your child. Some of those factors include:

• the child’s age, health, and sex;
• which parent had continuing care of the child before the parents separated;
• which parent has the best parenting skills;
• which parent has the willingness and capacity to care for the child;
• both parents’ work responsibilities;
• the parents’ physical and mental health;
• the parents’ ages;
• emotional ties of the parent and child;
• the parents’ moral fitness;
• the child’s home, school and community record;
• the child’s wishes if the child is old enough to express a preference;
• stability of the home environment and of each parent’s employment; and
• any other relevant factors.¹

¹ Albright v. Albright, 437 So. 2d 1003 (Miss. 1983)

Parental rights in Mississippi can be terminated for various reasons, some of which are related to domestic violence or sexual abuse. Parental rights could be terminated if the parent:

• is not meeting the needs of the child including food, clothing, shelter or medical care;
• is not communicating or visiting the child;
• has been abusive or neglectful and it has caused the child’s dislike towards that parent;
• is suffering from alcoholism or other drug addiction and has not been able to successfully complete an alcohol or drug treatment;
• has been abusive towards your child or another child, and having future contact with that parent is undesirable;
• has been convicted of any of the following offenses against any child:
  
  • rape;
  • sexual battery;
  • touching a child for lustful purposes;
  • exploitation of a child (as described under sections 97-5-31 through 97-5-37);
  • felonious abuse or battery of a child;
  • carnal knowledge of a step or adopted child or a child of a cohabitating partner; or
  • human trafficking of a child; or
• has been convicted of:
  
  • murder or voluntary manslaughter of his/her child;
  • aiding, abetting, attempting, or soliciting, or conspiring to commit murder or voluntary manslaughter of his/her child;
  • felony assault that resulted in “serious bodily injury” to his/her child.¹

¹ Miss. Code § 93-15-121

If you are not comfortable with the abuser being alone with your child, you might be thinking about asking the judge to order that visits with your child be supervised. If you are already in court because the abuser filed for visitation or custody, you may not have much to lose by asking that the visits be supervised if you can present a valid reason for your request although this may depend on your situation.

However, if there is no current court case, please get legal advice before you start a court case to ask for supervised visits. We strongly recommend that you talk to an attorney who specializes in custody matters to find out what you would have to prove to get the visits supervised and how long supervised visits would last, based on the facts of your case.

In the majority of cases, supervised visits are only a temporary measure. Although the exact visitation order will vary by state, county, or judge, the judge might order a professional to watch the other parent on a certain amount of visits or order a relative to supervise the visits for a certain amount of time – and if there are no obvious problems, the visits may likely become unsupervised. Oftentimes, at the end of a case, the other parent ends up with more frequent and/ or longer visits than s/he had before you went into court or even some form of custody.

In some cases, to protect your child from immediate danger by the abuser, starting a case to ask for custody and supervised visits is appropriate. To find out what may be best in your situation, please go to our MS Finding a Lawyer page to seek out legal advice.