Child custody and school registration.

January 3, 2016 6:56 AM

My 17 year old son has chosen to go live with his mother, and she now needs to register him in a Illinois Cook County public school district. She says that the district insists that she needs to have custody. We have joint custody, but I am the parent with residential custody.

The issue:

1) If I have joint custody with my wife but I'm legally the residential parent, can she send him to school in her district, since he's living with her now?

2) Our joint parenting agreement says that the agreement can be amended in writing. Does that mean I can just get something notarized, or does it still need to go through the court system, requiring lawyer fees?

[Asking for a friend. All text is from him. I will give him the link here and relay any questions or extra info.]

posted by Evilspork to Law & Government (5 answers total)

Best answer: Some school districts requirements are more stringent than others regarding proving residency/custodial parent. Here's the state regulations which say she can enroll the child and has sixty days to prove custody. In Cook County there's a form on the court website called DECLARATION UNDER UNIFORM CHILD CUSTODY JURISDICTION ACT (UCCJA), I think that it can be filled out and presented to the court pro se, but there's also a legal help desk for domestic relations at the Daley Center, #11 on this FAQ, but your friend may just be able to get assistance on how to file the form with a phone call to the court.
posted by readery at 7:18 AM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You won't be able to get a decisive answer unless your friend can figure out which school district is involved - Cook County IL has 20+ outside of Chicago Public Schools, and they each have different rules. Your friend will get the best response by simply calling the local school district's main line and asking to speak to someone about enrolling a kid under "Temporary Custodianship" which is the term for when a kid lives with an adult less than permanently and needs to go to school where he or she lives. In Chicago Public Schools I know that all the temporary custodian needs is a notarized letter signed by parent(s)/guardian(s), but it may be different in the collar counties.

If the mother is insisting on changing the custody agreement and using this as a bridge to that end and/or using the school situation as an opportunity to do that, your friend should talk to his lawyer, because that's a totally different issue than school enrollment.
posted by juniperesque at 7:19 AM on January 3, 2016 [5 favorites]

Best answer: Don't know Cook County, but I do know that in my district, a copy of the custody agreement is needed to be shown because of two items. One is residency. Only residents of the district are entitled to a FAPE in our district. Two, for legal reasons around not facilitating a parental kidnapping.

I do think if you have a notarized letter signed by both parties that states simply that child is currently living with mother and that you both agree to that, that should be good enough.
posted by AugustWest at 8:04 AM on January 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As of January 1, under the new Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, Illinois no longer has legal custody, joint custody or residential custody--it only has allocation of parenting time and parenting responsibility. If the parenting agreement authorizes the mother to enroll the child in school, that should be sufficient for most Chicago Public Schools. However, the IMDMA is new and no-one knows how to handle any of it, particularly when dealing with custody judgments from other jurisdictions.

readery's suggestion of going to the Daly Center and making use of the forms there and one of the two family law help desks is a very good one. The Illinois Legal Aid Online self-help guides are also very comprehensive. However, once you've got the right document for allowing mother to enroll child in school, you've got to deal with the individual school requirements for residency.
posted by crush-onastick at 11:36 AM on January 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone, he's read your answers and we both appreciate it.
posted by Evilspork at 3:41 PM on January 5, 2016