Many parents are surprised to find out that COVID vaccine decisions can impact their child’s custody rights and responsibilities. In fact, decisions related to a child, parent, and cohabitor’s vaccination status can affect your parental rights in California. When parents disagree about vaccine decisions, they sometimes turn to family law courts for custody modifications.
When courts hear child custody matters, they listen to both sides and examine the unique facts and circumstances before making any legal decisions. Once they have a clear understanding of the issues involved in the case, judges make child custody decisions based on the child’s best interests.
Legal And Physical Child Custody
There are two types of child custody, and COVID vaccine decisions can affect both legal and physical custody. Parents with legal custody can make important life decisions for their children, such as where they go to school, medical decisions, and religious upbringing. Legal custody includes deciding whether to vaccinate a child against COVID.
Legal custody can be sole, which means one parent is exclusively responsible for making decisions for their child. Or it can be joint, where both parents have a say in their child’s important life matters. Parents with joint legal custody are expected to work together to resolve any disagreements about decisions that need to be made.
Physical custody means where the child lives after a separation or divorce. The three types of physical custody are sole, primary, or joint. Sole and primary relate to where a child lives all or most of the time, while the other parent might have visitation rights. Joint custody means that the child essentially has two homes and spends close to an equal amount of time with each parent.
The Child’s Best Interest Standard
When a judge handles a child custody case, the goal is not to be fair to each parent because parents are not the focus of judicial decision-making. As mentioned above, child custody is to be only based on what is in the child’s best interests.
This means that when parents have vaccine disputes, the judge will look at what is best for the child. For example, if one parent does not want to get vaccinated, the other parent might seek custody modification. The court will then have to decide if it is best for the child to live primarily or exclusively at the vaccinated parent’s house.
Courts often do not want to get involved in this type of dispute, and judges sometimes tell parents to work it out. However, there are some cases where courts have stepped in and decided to make custody decisions based on vaccination statuses.
Parental Disputes Over Vaccinations For Children
Parents in California and across the country have had to decide whether to get children vaccinated against COVID. Many of these cases have ended up in family law court when parents disagree about vaccinating their children.
Depending on the circumstances, parents may lose their legal custody rights if they choose not to vaccinate their children and the other parent takes them to court. Although a judge will not make vaccination decisions for a child, he may decide that giving sole legal custody or tie-breaking authority to the parent who favors vaccination is best for the child.
Vaccination Status Of Parents And Others Living In The Home
As described in the example above, parents have also sought custody modifications because their child’s other parent is not vaccinated. In some cases, family law courts have decided that it is in the child’s best interest to live primarily or solely with the parent who is vaccinated.
The vaccination status of other people living in a parent’s home might impact physical custody as well. For example, if one parent lives with a spouse who is not vaccinated, a judge might decide that it is better for the child to live in the other parent’s home where everyone living there is vaccinated.
Meet With A California Child Custody Attorney
If you have questions about the COVID vaccine and how your decisions might impact your custody rights, call 424-250-9130 or submit an online form to meet with California child custody attorney Bruce A. Mandel.
Bruce has been representing clients in family law cases for more than 30 years. He knows California family laws and understands the legal implications that this unprecedented pandemic has had in family law courts.
Follow the Law Offices of Bruce A. Mandel on Facebook to keep up to date on California family law and learn more about how Bruce can help you and your family.
