Previous posts here have talked about how a father in Phoenix, Arizona, who is not married to his child’s mother can bypass much of the formal process of establishing paternity by signing an Acknowledgement of Paternity form. However, as those previous posts mentioned, the form itself, while it makes a man legally his child’s father, confers no specific rights to child custody or parenting time. If it turns out that a father needs a court order in order to have the time to form a relationship with his children, then an additional step will be necessary.
To take this additional step, a father may need to get legal help. After all, while mothers and fathers are legally on equal footing when it comes to custody and parenting time, there are lot of factors that can influence a judge one way or the other.
It is sad in this respect that sometimes the past mistakes of fathers can come back to haunt them even though they are, at present, good fathers who want to have time with their children. In other cases, a father may even face false accusations of violence or abuse, simply because the mother of the child does not want to share the child with the father.
A father who wants custody or even broad parenting time with his or her child sometimes faces legal hurdles that he may find hard to navigate by himself. At our law firrm, we do our best to help fathers process and then make their cases for custody or visitation in court should negotiations fail or not be feasible.
