The Utah Court website and the Utah Office of Recovery Services website provide child support calculators that use the current Utah child support guidelines to accurately calculate child support.  You can link to them from this site by clicking on the links in the previous sentence.

BUT a child support calculator is not helpful to you if you don’t know what information to put into the calculator and why! (more…)

It may be surprising to some parents that that their own parents may petition a court and obtain a court order requiring them to allow grandparent visitation.  To most parents the right to make decisions and raise their children as they see fit, including the amount grandparent visitation, is a right inherent in being a parent.  However, in some instances the court may find that court ordered grandparent visitation is appropriate.  Keep in mind that this blog article only is speaking to grandparent visitation of a child, not custody of a child where a parent is unfit or absent.

One situation where we see grandparents get an order allowing visitation or “grandparent-time” is when a child has an absent parent, due to death or abandonment, and absent parent’s own parents, therefore, do not get to see their grandchild because of a deteriorated relationship with the child’s remaining parent.

Generally speaking, parents have a constitutional right to manage the care, custody and control of their child, which includes the right to make decisions regarding grandparent visitation.  However, a parent’s right to make decisions regarding his or her child’s upbringing is not absolute.  For example, while parents have the right to generally decide where to send their children to school, a state may nevertheless adopt compulsory school attendance laws requiring that you send your children to school before they reach a certain age.  A state can also exercise its “parens patriae” power and intervene on behalf of children in abusive or neglectful situations even if the parent objects.  The state must generally show that there is some important interest that trumps the parent’s constitutional right. (more…)

This question is asked in many different ways but the question basically is one about bias.  Both men and women often believe that Utah courts favor or disfavor one gender or the other when it comes to awarding custody.  

Statistically, there is no question that the vast majority of cases in Utah give primary custody and more extensive parent-time to mothers.  However, it is difficult to tell whether this is just a pure prejudice against fathers or if Utah couples merely tend to follow traditional roles and that puts mothers in an advantageous position for custody.

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