Application for Custody

When a marriage in a Vashi high-rise breaks down, the flat, the car and the savings can be divided on paper. A seven-year-old cannot. She has a school bus at 7.15, a grandmother who plaits her hair and two parents who each believe she should live with them. Who decides, and on what test? A custody application is unlike almost every other pleading because the person it concerns is not a party and cannot speak for herself. How do you draft it so that the court sees the child first?

In two minutes

An application for custody asks the court to place a minor child with one parent (or another person) and to fix the other parent's access; the governing test is the child's welfare, and the drafter pleads the child's age, needs, routine and the applicant's fitness in facts, not in adjectives.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Drafting, Pleading and Conveyancing – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.