What if our children don't want to live with the parent who receives custody?
One of the things we consider in determining the child custody plan is children's needs, desires, and wants. But, of course, that depends on their age. Young children are often confused. They often will repeat what their parents have told them to say. If it's a high conflict divorce, children are sometimes rehearsed. Sometimes they're rewarded for saying things like I want to live with my mommy because Mommy's getting me a puppy. I want to live with Daddy, he's getting me an ATV. Those kinds of things. And they really don't understand. They're really just parroting, sometimes, what their parents have said.Older children seem to have stronger opinions. Sometimes these opinions are opinions based on real experience, and sometimes they're based on fear and anxiety. For example, I don't want to live with my mother because he's more strict. I want to be with my mother because she's sadder about this. I want to take care of her. I want to be with my friends, and they all live around Mom's neighborhood, or they live around Dad's neighborhood. So their desires for where they live aren't really about parenting as much about other things. And so one has to look at where the child's at developmentally, their chronological and emotional age, where the parents live, their resources, in determining child custody. But for the most part, the children's wishes are listened to. And they're one of the factors that we look at in determining child custody, but not the only factor at all. And we weight them based upon other factors like how old are they and what are their experiences.
