Can my child testify in my divorce? – Patterson Bray PLLC

Transcript:

00:00:03 the technical answer is yes under Tennessee law if your child has reached the age of 12 they have the right to State their preference as to which parent they prefer to live with in a custody situation the caveat is that in Tennessee the court takes into consideration a number of factors in making custody decisions and other custody related decisions about what the visitation schedule is going to be who’s going to be making parental decisions the court doesn’t just rely on the child’s preference and so yes a child

00:00:40 can testify to that however a court does not have to use just the preference in making a custody decision the other thing I would say about children testifying is at the end of the day what’s best for children is that parents are making decisions and that they are co-parenting and making decisions and telling their child as a unit this is the decision we have made to the extent parents even though they are separating can sit down and say this is the decision we have made children have better outcomes and so to the extent we

00:01:14 can avoid children being involved in their parents’ divorce that’s always our goal at Patterson Bray sometimes it is necessary in contested litigation but to the extent we can avoid that we certainly want to do that because we don’t want children involved in their parents divorce

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