Experienced Marietta Child Custody Lawyer
Child custody is rarely just about where a child spends the week. For many parents, it involves protecting a child’s stability, maintaining meaningful relationships with both parents, and developing a parenting arrangement that works with the realities of the family’s life.
At the Law Office of Gina Smalley, we represent parents in Marietta and throughout Cobb County in child custody, parenting time, and custody modification matters. Attorney Gina Smalley provides experienced, highly personalized representation designed around the individual needs of each family.
For families with significant assets or demanding professional lives, custody arrangements can become particularly complex. Parents may need to address extensive work travel, multiple residences, private-school schedules, extracurricular activities, vacations, relocation concerns, or disagreements over important educational and medical decisions. A workable custody arrangement should account for these realities rather than forcing a family into a generic solution.
When custody is contested, we also help clients respond to allegations involving parenting ability, substance abuse, family violence, or other claims that could significantly affect the court’s decision.
Contact our Cobb County family law office today or call 770-794-4460 to discuss your circumstances with an experienced Marietta child custody attorney.
How Is Child Custody Determined in Georgia?
Georgia courts determine custody based upon the best interests of the child. That requires looking beyond any single issue and considering the circumstances of the child and both parents.
Depending upon the case, the court may consider factors including:
- The relationship and emotional ties between the child and each parent
- Each parent’s involvement in the child’s education, activities, health care, and daily life
- Each parent’s ability to provide a stable home environment
- The child’s educational needs and established routine
- Each parent’s knowledge of and familiarity with the child’s needs
- The willingness of each parent to encourage a relationship between the child and the other parent
- The physical and mental health of the parents
- Evidence involving family violence, abuse, neglect, or substance abuse
- The recommendations of a guardian ad litem or custody evaluator, when applicable
- The child’s wishes when the child is old enough for those wishes to be considered
Every family is different. Effective custody representation requires understanding not only what a parent wants, but how the family’s history, routines, relationships, and practical needs can be presented to the court.
Creating Parenting Plans for Complex Families
A good parenting plan should provide predictability while leaving enough flexibility for real life.
That can be especially important when one or both parents are business owners, executives, physicians, professionals, or others whose schedules do not fit neatly into a traditional workweek. Parenting arrangements may need to address business travel, changing work schedules, holidays, international or extended vacations, transportation between homes, school activities, and communication when a parent is traveling.
Families may also need clear provisions regarding important decisions involving education, health care, extracurricular activities, religious upbringing, passports, travel, and other issues.
The goal is not simply to get through the divorce. It is to establish an arrangement that can continue working for the family afterward.
High-Conflict Child Custody Disputes
Some custody cases cannot be resolved through ordinary negotiation.
Serious disagreements may arise over parenting ability, communication, relocation, substance use, new relationships, allegations of abuse, or attempts by one parent to limit the other’s relationship with the child.
When allegations are made, their consequences can be substantial. We help clients respond carefully and strategically, particularly when accusations are exaggerated, unsupported, or inconsistent with the family’s history.
At the same time, legitimate concerns involving a child’s safety or well-being must be taken seriously and presented appropriately to the court.
Modifications to Child Custody
A custody arrangement that worked when a divorce was finalized may no longer fit a family’s circumstances several years later.
A parent’s relocation, substantial changes in a child’s educational or developmental needs, changes in a parent’s circumstances, or other significant developments may create grounds to seek a modification of an existing custody order.
If circumstances have changed, Gina Smalley can evaluate the existing order, the developments that have occurred since it was entered, and the options available for seeking or opposing a custody modification.
Georgia Child Custody FAQs
Physical custody generally concerns where the child lives and how parenting time is divided. Legal custody concerns authority over major decisions affecting the child, such as education, medical care, extracurricular activities, and religious upbringing. The details of decision-making authority can be particularly important when parents disagree about major aspects of a child’s life.
No. Georgia custody decisions are based on the best interests of the child rather than an automatic preference for mothers or fathers. The court evaluates the circumstances of the individual family and the relationship between the child and each parent.
Age matters. In Georgia, a child who is 14 or older has significant statutory rights concerning the selection of the parent with whom the child wishes to live, although the court still applies the best-interests-of-the-child standard. For children between 11 and 14, the court may consider the child’s wishes, but those wishes do not control the outcome.
A demanding career does not by itself determine whether someone is a capable parent. The practical issue is how the parent’s schedule affects the child’s care, routine, transportation, schooling, and time with each parent. For executives, business owners, physicians, and other professionals, a carefully designed parenting plan can be particularly important.
Parents may need to determine both decision-making authority and financial responsibility for private school, tutoring, sports, camps, lessons, and other activities. When these expenses and activities have been an established part of a child’s life, they can become important subjects during divorce and custody negotiations.
A parenting plan can establish how major decisions are made and, in some cases, give one parent final decision-making authority over particular subjects. The appropriate arrangement depends upon the family’s circumstances and the parents’ ability to make decisions together.
Yes. Families with multiple residences, substantial vacation travel, or unusual professional schedules may need more detailed parenting plans addressing transportation, advance notice, passports, communication, holidays, and travel with the children.
Allegations involving abuse, neglect, substance use, or inappropriate parenting can significantly affect a custody case. They should be addressed carefully rather than dismissed or answered emotionally. Documentation, communications, witnesses, professional records, and the family’s history may all become important depending upon the allegation.
Yes, but custody cannot simply be changed informally because one parent wants a different arrangement. A court order is generally required to modify custody. Whether modification is appropriate depends upon the circumstances and the legal basis for requesting the change.
Not necessarily. Parents can often negotiate custody and parenting arrangements and present an agreement to the court for approval. When an appropriate agreement can be reached, doing so may give parents considerably more control over the details of their family’s future than leaving those decisions entirely to a judge.
Talk With a Marietta Child Custody Attorney
Custody decisions can affect your relationship with your children for years after a divorce is over. They deserve careful attention and a strategy based upon the actual circumstances of your family.
Attorney Gina Smalley provides one-on-one representation to parents facing custody and visitation disputes in Marietta and throughout Cobb County. Whether you are establishing custody during a divorce, negotiating a detailed parenting plan, responding to serious allegations, or seeking a modification of an existing order, we can help you understand your options and determine how to move forward.
Call 770-794-4460 or contact the Law Office of Gina Smalley online to schedule a consultation.
Call 770-794-4460 or Email Today
