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Home/Practice Areas/Family Law/Custody agreements
Texas does not use the word custody. It splits the question into who decides, and who has the child when — and the difference matters more than the label.
Family Law
Conservatorship is about decision-making rights and duties — education, medical treatment, psychiatric care, the child's primary residence. Possession and access is the schedule. Support is a third question that follows from the first two. Courts start from a presumption that parents should be joint managing conservators, which is a presumption about rights, not about equal time.
Texas has a standard possession order that most cases start from, with an expanded version many parents elect. It works well for some families and poorly for others — shift workers, offshore rotations, long commutes, infants and teenagers with their own schedules all need something drafted for them. Ambiguity about pick-up times, holidays, summer notice deadlines and who travels is what produces enforcement fights two years later.
Guideline calculations, net resources, medical and dental support, enforcement and modification.
Read more →Joint and sole managing conservatorship, decision-making rights, and what a possessory conservator actually holds.
Read more →The grounds, the standard of proof, and the situations where termination is sought or defended.
Read more →Orders can be modified when circumstances have materially and substantially changed — a relocation, a new work schedule, a change in the child's needs, or conduct that makes the current arrangement unworkable. Until it is modified, the existing order is enforceable exactly as written, whatever the parents have been doing informally.
Not really. It separates conservatorship — the rights and duties — from possession and access, which is the schedule.
The child's best interest: their needs, each parent's ability to meet them, stability, and each parent's willingness to support the child's relationship with the other.
A judge may hear an older child's preference in chambers and weigh it alongside everything else. It is a factor, not the decision.
Yes, and agreed orders are usually better ones. It still has to be drafted precisely, because your written version is what governs on a bad day.
No. Shift workers, offshore rotations, long distances, infants and teenagers frequently need something drafted for them rather than the default.
Document it, keep exchanges civil and in writing, and bring us the pattern. Enforcement works far better with a record than with a complaint.
No. Possession and support are independent obligations, and withholding one to punish the other creates a second problem for you.
Yes, where circumstances have materially and substantially changed. Until it is changed, the existing order governs whatever the parents have been doing informally.
The same framework applies through a suit affecting the parent-child relationship, with paternity established where it has not been already.
That changes the analysis entirely, and there are protective mechanisms including supervised possession. Raise it immediately rather than at trial.
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