Rights of Parents and Children in Family Law

Family law is an incredibly complex and emotionally difficult area of the law to deal with. This area of the law is designed to deal with almost all matters that relate to domestic relationships and family-related issues. Because family law is such a varied and complex area of the law, there are many people who do not realize that their conflict falls under this specific banner. San Jose, California, family law attorneys are skilled professionals who will be able to help people determine if their familial conflicts are in fact family law legal matters and help them determine how to solve these problems. Family law encompasses many different kinds of cases, including the rights of the child and the rights of the parent.

Rights of Children

The rights of the child are especially important in family law because the child is too young to adequately represent themselves, and so they must have a lawyer to do it for them. The rights of the child that family law deals with include emancipation, foster care, being a ward, and parental child abduction. Often, a child will have a lawyer appointed to them by the court to defend their interests. The lawyer will discuss the situation with the child and then try to balance what the child wants against what the lawyer deems is in the best interests of the child.

Rights of Parents

The rights of the parent are also important in family law cases because the parent needs to know what rights they have and the limits of those rights regarding their child. A parent's rights extend to issues like paternity, legitimacy, child custody, legal guardianship, adoption, child support, contact, visitation, and grandparent visitation. These issues are all complicated ones that parents must sort through when someone attempts to remove a child from their care. A child might be removed by a former spouse who has severed the marital relationship, by the state, or even by the child's own volition. San Jose, California, family law attorneys are trained to help both parents and children sort through all these issues and help each side defend their own rights.