Child Custody Lawyer in Austin, Texas

Custody is never about winning. It is about your child’s whole life.

Texas courts decide conservatorship, possession and support around one question: what serves the best interest of the child. We build your case around the same question, whether we are negotiating a first parenting plan or changing one that has stopped working.

Victoria has spent twenty years in Texas family courts and has completed the 40 hour basic and 30 hour family mediation training. That combination is why the advice here is about which path actually protects your children, rather than which one takes longest.

We act in Travis and Williamson counties, and consultations run over Zoom or in Austin.

Texas says conservatorship, not custody

The word matters because it splits a question most people treat as one. Conservatorship is about who holds which rights and duties: schooling, medical decisions, and who decides where the child primarily lives.

Possession and access is the separate question of when the child is with each parent. You can be a joint managing conservator and still have the child less than half the time.

People arrive believing they are fighting for custody. Usually they are fighting about one right, or about the schedule. Naming which one changes the case and often shortens it.

Joint versus sole managing conservatorship

Texas starts from a rebuttable presumption that appointing both parents as joint managing conservators is in the child’s best interest. A finding of a history of family violence involving either parent removes that presumption. The law goes further where there is credible evidence of a history or pattern of past or present child neglect, or of physical or sexual abuse by one parent directed against the other parent, a spouse or a child: in that situation a court may not appoint joint managing conservators at all, and the law also presumes it is not in the child’s best interest to name that parent sole managing conservator or to give that parent the exclusive right to decide where the child lives. These protections have to be raised and proved, so if this is your situation, say so early.

Joint does not mean equal time, and it does not mean every decision is shared. The order still names who has the exclusive right to decide the child’s primary residence. Other rights can go to one parent, to both jointly, or to each of you independently.

Sole managing conservatorship gives one parent those rights. Because joint managing conservatorship is only presumed to be in the child’s best interest, that presumption can be rebutted: a court appoints a sole managing conservator where the evidence shows a joint arrangement is not in the child’s best interest. The statute directs the court to weigh whether the child’s needs and development would benefit from a joint arrangement, whether the parents can put the child first and reach shared decisions, whether each parent can encourage the child’s relationship with the other, who did the child rearing before the case, how far apart the parents live, and the preference of a child aged 12 or older. A separate and much higher test, that appointing a parent would significantly impair the child’s physical health or emotional development, is what a non-parent has to meet to displace a parent.

The court is directed to weigh the parties’ qualifications without regard to sex or marital status. That is in the statute, and it is the answer to a question we are asked constantly.

Possession, access, and the Standard Possession Order

The Standard Possession Order is the schedule the Family Code sets out, and Texas presumes two things about it. That it gives a parent reasonable minimum possession, and that it serves the child. Both presumptions can be rebutted with evidence.

Read the first one carefully. It is a floor, not a ceiling. Parents routinely agree to more time than the standard order gives, and a schedule built around your actual week usually beats the default.

There is one more thing the default now does on its own. Since 1 September 2021, where the parent with possession lives no more than 50 miles from the child’s primary residence, the court must expand the standard order automatically: weekends run from the end of school on Friday to the start of school on Monday, and the Thursday period becomes an overnight. You do not have to ask for it. The court departs from that only if the parent declines it on the record, possession is being restricted, or the court finds the expansion is not in the child’s best interest. For two parents both living in the Austin area, the expanded order is the starting point. It applies to cases filed on or after 1 September 2021, so an older order does not change by itself.

Equal or near-equal schedules are agreed in Texas every day. What decides whether one works is practical. How far apart you live, the school run, and both work patterns. Above all, whether the two of you can discuss a child without it becoming a fight.

Where the child is under three, the court can order a different schedule and then step up to the standard order later.

Does your child get a say?

This is the most misunderstood rule in Texas family law, so here it is precisely.

A child aged 12 or older does not choose, and what the statute provides is narrower than most people are told. In a trial before a judge, or at a hearing, the court must interview a child of 12 or older in chambers if a party, the amicus attorney or the child’s attorney ad litem asks, but only about the child’s wishes as to conservatorship, or as to which parent holds the exclusive right to decide where the child primarily lives. On possession and access, or any other issue, the interview is discretionary at any age, and for a child under 12 it is discretionary throughout. If the case is tried to a jury, the judge may not interview the child in chambers about an issue the jury decides.

Two things follow. Somebody has to ask for the interview, because it does not happen automatically. And the statute says plainly that interviewing a child does not reduce the court’s discretion in deciding best interest.

So the child’s view is heard and weighed. It does not decide the case, and telling a child otherwise puts a weight on them they should not be carrying.

When the order stops fitting your child

Orders are written for the family you were. Children start school, jobs move, people remarry. Texas lets a custody order be modified where the change serves the child, and custody cases have three doors of their own: a material and substantial change in circumstances, a child of 12 or older telling the judge in chambers where they want to live, or the primary parent having voluntarily handed over care for six months or more (deployment does not count).

There is a stricter door in the first year. File to change who decides the primary residence within a year and you must attach a sworn affidavit; without it the court will not even set a hearing. Count that year carefully: it runs from the earlier of the date the order was rendered or the date you signed the mediated or collaborative settlement agreement the order was based on, so a case that settled in mediation starts the clock at the mediation, not at the judge’s signature. The affidavit has to allege one of only three things: that the child’s present environment may endanger the child’s physical health or significantly impair the child’s emotional development; that the parent holding the primary-residence right is the one seeking or consenting to the change and it is in the child’s best interest; or that that parent has voluntarily given up primary care and possession for at least six months and the change is in the child’s best interest. It is a deliberate brake on repeat litigation, and it is why the first order is worth getting right.

If the other parent is ignoring the schedule rather than asking to change it, that is enforcement, a different case with different tools, and the two are often filed together. How both work, what the court can do, and how to document denied possession as it happens is covered on our modifications and enforcement page.

Moving away with a child

Most Texas orders carry a geographic restriction, usually tying the child’s primary residence to a county and those next to it. It is one of the most negotiated terms in any parenting plan and one of the least noticed at signing.

If you want to move outside it, you need the other parent’s agreement or a court order lifting it. Moving first and asking afterwards is the worst version of this, and it is the version we are usually called about.

These cases turn on detail: the reason for the move, what the child gains, and whether a workable schedule can survive the distance. They are worth preparing properly.

Grandparents and other non-parents

Texas sets a deliberately high bar here, because it starts from the presumption that a parent acts in their child’s best interest.

A grandparent asking for possession or access must overcome that presumption. The proof is that denying access would significantly impair the child’s physical health or emotional wellbeing. They must also be the parent of a parent of the child, and that parent must have died, be incarcerated during the three months before the petition is filed, have been found by a court to be incompetent, or have no actual or court-ordered possession of or access to the child. At least one parent’s rights must still be intact. There is a further gate that catches most of these cases at the door: a grandparent has to file a sworn affidavit with the suit setting out facts showing that denying access would significantly impair the child, and since 1 September 2025 any non-parent filing or intervening against a parent has to serve a similar affidavit with the first pleading. If the affidavit does not carry adequate facts, the court must dismiss the case before anyone gives evidence.

It is a real route and it is a narrow one. We will tell you honestly at the first conversation whether the facts reach it.

Why most custody disputes settle in mediation

Because the alternative asks a judge who has met your family for an hour to design their week for the next decade.

An agreement reached in mediation is stronger than an ordinary settlement. If a mediated settlement agreement states prominently, in bold, capitals or underlining, that it is not subject to revocation, and each party and each attorney present signs it, you are entitled to judgment on it notwithstanding other rules of law. A judge can refuse to enter it only in narrow circumstances involving family violence or an abuse history, where the judge also finds the agreement is not in the child’s best interest. Outside those situations there is no general best-interest review. That is a large amount of control to hand back to two parents, and it is the reason to read the terms in the room rather than afterwards.

Our mediation rates are published on this site. Where there is family violence or a parent negotiating in bad faith, mediation is not the right first step, and we will say so.