How Child Custody Issues Can Mess Up Your Child's Education

If you are going through a divorce, and you have school-going children, you should take precautions to ensure that your custody issues don't affect your children's education. Here are three ways custody issues can affect education:

Effect on Homework

Children usually call upon their parents to help them with homework and school projects. This isn't a big deal when the two of you are still married, but it may become complicated when you divorce and have to live separately. Most divorced parents agree that, at any particular time, the parent with the physical custody of the child should help with the homework. However, this only works for short school assignments that can be completed in a day or two.

What happens when a child has to shuttle between two homes and has a long-running school project? Does the child stop the project while in another parent's house and pick it up when they go back to the parent helping with the project? Do both parents have to chip in helping the child with the project? As you can see, this issue can confuse the child and even trigger disagreements between parents. The custody court may not touch on this issue, but you owe it to your child to come up with a solution before such a scenario arises.

Distance From School

If you have joint or shared custody and live within the same school district, then the court is likely to order that the child continues to attend the same school they had been attending while the two of you were married. In principle, this is the best solution because disruptions may interfere with the child's schooling.

However, complications arise when one parent moves farther from the school and the other parent's home. In such a scenario, the child may have to spend more time travelling to school while living with the parent that has moved. With equal custody, the child may face a lengthy commute that may affect their education.

Parental Disagreements 

Lastly, you may also affect your child's schooling if you take your personal disagreements to school. This may happen, for example, if you decide to use the school as an exchange point (an ill-advised decision) and quarrel during most of the exchanges. Children are likely to be embarrassed by such scenes, and their education may suffer if they associate their school with such unhappy memories.

For more information about keeping your child's life as stable as possible through a divorce, check out child custody lawyers' websites like http://www.liebmannfamilylaw.com/.