The best interest of the child is the Court’s paramount consideration when deciding issues of conservatorship, possession, and access in divorce cases, SAPCR cases, and modification cases.
Generally, to establish a child’s best interest, the Petitioner and Respondent should address-usually by presenting evidence-certain factors the Court can consider when the Court is making orders regarding the child.
Texas Courts have identified a non-exhaustive list of factors that a Court can consider when deciding what is in the child’s best interest:
- Physical and Emotional Needs: which parent will best provide for the child’s physical, psychological, and emotional needs and development now and in the future.
- Physical and Emotional Danger: whether either parent poses any physical or emotional danger to the child now or in the future.
- Stability of Home: the stability of each parent’s home.
- Plans for the Child: each parent’s plans for the child e.g. living arrangement, education, after-school care, extracurricular activities, etc.
- Cooperation Between Parents: each parent’s ability to give the child first priority and reach shared decisions in the child’s best interest.
- Parenting Skills: each parent’s parenting skills.
- Primary Caregiver: which parent was the child’s primary caregiver before the case.
- Child’s Preferences: the child’s communicated wishes. ***this is typically only a considered factor when the children are teenagers.
- Geographic Proximity: where the parents reside in relation to each other. ***this is only a factor when parents have already separated.
- Siblings: If divided or split conservatorship is requested, the effect separation would have on the siblings.
- Promoting Relationships Between the Child and Other Parent: the extent to which each parent can encourage and accept a positive relationship between the child and the other parent.
- False Report of Child Abuse: whether either parent ever knowingly made a false report of child abuse. If the Court finds that a report of child abuse is false or lacking factual foundation, the Court may restrict further access to the child by the parent who made the report.
- International Child Abduction: the need for measures to protect the child from being internationally abducted to a foreign country.
- Present Fitness and Recent Past Conduct: each parent’s present fitness to care for the child, and the recent past conduct of each parent, as a reasonable predictor of the parent’s behavior in the future.
- Drug or Alcohol Abuse: a parent having a drug or alcohol problem. A parent may be denied managing conservatorship based on recent drug or alcohol abuse.
- Sexual Conduct: a parent’s sexual conduct to the extent that it renders that parent unfit to act as a parent.
The following factors are factors that the Court may not consider when determining the best interest of the child:
- Gender
- Race
- Religion
- Immigration status
- Marital status **for modification cases brought post-divorce
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