Michigan. Been “dating” boyfriend for ten and a half years. We have a five year old child together. We live in a house together which he bought. My name is nothing. Financially we are not tied together in anyway. We have no legal custody arrangement other than him being on the birth certificate. Home, where my family is, is two and a half hours away. I have a job so I am not dependent on him, but he provides for our child and I. He is on call for work 24/7 and annually has over a thousand hours of overtime on average. If I wanted to leave, what’s the best steps to take?
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Michigan no longer has common law marriage fyi.from. it ended 6 years ago but you might be grandfather lawed into it.
I’m aware of that, it’s whatever to me. I’m more thinking in r guards to custody. Like, can I move home where my family is at? Where would I file for custody? I have no expectation of living in this house and him moving out. Or if I move and he sells I don’t expect to get anything. I don’t want anything.
If there’s no custody arrangement you can move or take your child wherever you want. Even out of the country if you wanted too. To file for custody it would be best with a lawyer. But to file it yourself I’m not sure how you go about doing that.
if I filed for custody I’d use a lawyer. But would that automatically bring up child support too?
I don’t know about your state. Hire an attorney. File for the custody you want. You can reside close or even over 100+ miles away with your child. Being that your family is there and you want to be closer to family is fine. They’ll set up custody with arrangements. If it’s over 100 miles the non custodial parent will have longer visitations vs the state standards if you lived closer.
Make sure you’re detailed and specific! That helped me when I had to go back to court. I moved out of state and I made sure the arrangements were detailed. Like they had to text my number 2 weeks prior to meeting to let me know they wanted to meet (it’s a 4 hour drive halfway) I had to reply to said message. They also had to text again within 24 hours to notify me they still wanted to meet (things can happen) and I would have to reply to meet them at a designated public place. We asked to meet at a police station they asked for McDonald’s in the halfway point town.
Make sure that everytime you go to meet, walk into the nearest public place and buy something to have a receipt of the time stamp and place incase he doesn’t show, you have legal proof you were there.
Also make sure you put who can meet you and pick up and drop off y’all’s child. In Texas the standard is the parent can designate WHOEVER they want no questions asked! I didn’t know back in 2008 that I could request it to just be him and what not.
That’s why I say details details details. Depending on how old the child is we had zoom calls set up once a week at a certain time that my ex or his family could call.
It was stated that he had to buy our son a phone to communicate respectfully if I didn’t have a phone for him.
Also state that when your child is in his custody that you’re allowed to call and speak to your child too. I’ve seen a lot of families where the other parent wouldn’t allow the parent to call and talk to their kid while in their custody.
It sucks but it’s better to be detailed because things can change and happen over the years and I wish I would’ve been more throughout with my divorce case.
Also I noticed you mentioned child support. I’m not sure if it’s all states but most you can deny child support but others it’s mandatory and they’ll go after the non custodial parent for child support. Either you or him can set it up with your Attorney General but sometimes it’ll be automatically set up in a divorce case. Definitely ask your attorney.
thanks for the info. My hometown is about 120 miles from here so I’d be just outside of that
If you move and have to file for food or medical assistance then the State of Michigan will want to know who the Father is. He would be served by the State to appear in Family Court, where custody, visitation abd support would be determined. His support, if you keep state assistance, would go to the state to pay back for taking care of your child financially. If you went to work, got off assistance, then his child support would go back to you 100%. Just went through this….in Mi.
haven’t needed state assistance nor will I. I have a career, health benefits, etc. but we have a large difference in incomes regardless.
I packed mine and my daughters belongs and moved. After a few months of realizing he was on the bc and had the same rights as me….meaning if I let him have her for a visitation he could just simply not return her,I filed the paperwork in my new county and state of residence establishing a visitation schedule so he could no longer just disappear with her if he wanted to.
Michigan is not a common law state. You can ask for child support & take half in accounts that have your name on it. Take your share before leaving.
-NAL
Get a custody order.
Then leave.