School closures don’t mean parents get to extend child custody schedules, officials say
When parents going through a divorce draft child custody arrangements, perhaps they never anticipate that a school closing might be extended indefinitely.
Yet for many, that day has come as part of an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus.
Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Thursday that temporarily closes all Texas schools through April 3. Some school districts have acted independently of the governor’s office and extended spring break vacations until future dates or closed buildings indefinitely and moved instruction online.
This has left some parents confused about how they should interpret their court-ordered child visitation agreements concerning when they should return children to the other parent.
The courts have said that in these cases, the parent with spring break visitation should return the child in accordance with the originally scheduled school calendar before coronavirus school cancellations were put into place.
“It’s just common sense really,” said Mark Childress, a Fort Worth-based family law attorney. “If they canceled school for the entire year, would a parent be able to keep the children for the rest of the year?”
While there are no statistics available on how many of these disputes are actually occurring and have found their way to the courts, it has been enough of a concern to trigger a policy directive signed onto by five of the six Tarrant County family courts and the Supreme Court of Texas as to how child custody orders should be interpreted.
One Tarrant County directive, put in place on Friday, states that, “even though some school districts are ‘extending’ spring breaks because of COVID-19, spring break possession ends according to the previously scheduled spring break as set forth in the school calendar for the applicable school district.”
The order crafted by officials in the 360th Tarrant County District Court, where State District Judge Patricia Baca-Bennett presides, means the same thing but has different wording.
“It was obviously a problem because the Texas Supreme Court was concerned about it,” Baca-Bennett said.
Rather than have people come in with a lot of writs asking for the return of their children, the courts issued guidance that parents should observe the original custody schedules and school calendars, Baca-Bennett said. The goals are, because of the coronavirus pandemic, to keep people from coming into the courtroom, Baca-Bennett said.
However, Baca-Bennett is modifying her order to come into compliance with a new Texas Supreme Court directive issued on Thursday, which tells courts to conduct non-essential hearings in accordance with federal, local and state restrictions.
Childress said he typically charges between $2,000 and $2,500 to handle these types of child custody matters. Usually, the court will order that the offending party must pay attorney fees, Childress said.
“The majority of these parents are not keeping these children in good faith,” Childress said. “Reach out to a lawyer before you make a decision to keep a child. People need to know their rights and sometimes they don’t find out what those rights are until it’s too late.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2020 at 5:05 PM.
