yeah, I know, two child custody threads so close together. Weird.

Anyways, in this, one of my four or five ideas I'm trying to decide between, Trevor the MC had a daughter 7 or 8 years before the movie begins. Shortly after the baby was born, Trevor had to go to China (or somewhere equally distant) for work. He was gone there for months and while he was away, his girlfreind, the mother of his kid, finds someone else. And Trevor, being young and not really ready for a child at the time, decides it was all for the best and moves on.

Now, 7 or 8 years later, Trevor's boss tells him it is imparative to the fate of the world that the child be back in Trevor's life (there's magic afoot, complicated and I won't get into more then I have to). So basically, Trevor has to get partial custody of a kid he hasn't seen in 7 years.

The facts, as I see them. Please shout out if anything seems unreasonable. All I know about these matters are what I picked up from watching movies.
The mother has taken no legal measures to prevent Trevor from seeing Roxy (the daughter). Roxy has a step-father, who has basically been her Daddy to her all her life, though not legally (he didn't adopt her).

I figure Trevor's got some right to Roxy, since he is her real father. And he only needs to have her occasionally, weekends or every other weekend or something.

I'm sure they'd be suspicious. Since Trevor hasn't taken any interest in all those years, why is he suddenly trying to get custody? (I also need an excuse for Trev to make up to tell them, since he can't tell the truth. Super secret Magicians Alliance type stuffs, plus they wouldn't believe him and think he was crazy and he'd be out of luck then)

I'm sure there'd have to be some sort of court involvment. I think the mother probably wouldn't be crazy about handing Roxy over. Not because she has anything against Trevor. Just because she suspcious and since she hasn't spoken to him in 7 years, she really doesn't know him anymore. It'd be like handing her kid over to a stranger. So I figure there'd be some sort of court thing. (I'll probably won't write the actual scenes for that so i don't need to know a lot of detail, but I do need to know basically what would happen.)

Basically, anything you can tell me would be grand.

If Roxy's mother hadn't done anything within the legal system regarding child-support or custody when she and Trevor originally split up, there's a very good chance she wouldn't do anything about it now. Family court is absolutely loony, and completely inconsistent, even within the same jurisdiction, so people try to avoid it whenever possible. Unless Trevor formally gave up his parental rights, or failed to contest someone else claiming them through a legal adoption (which takes YEARS), or had been proven unfit, there is legally pretty much no chance of denying him access to his biological daughter. Roxy's mother would probably know that, (or learn it pretty quickly), and might avoid the legal system all together. Really, I'd think it much more likely that she'd hire a private detective to check up on Trevor, just to make sure he was trustworthy. I mean, she trusted him 8 years ago, so the real question is what changed so that he came back, and that's not something family court would look into.

Of course, my court experience is second hand and a few years out of date, but I doubt the system's improved any. Don't know if that helps any, but at least there are good reasons not to include court scenes and/or research.

-- jillyfae
"Of All The Things I've Lost, I Miss My Mind The Most."

Unless there is a real reason for the mother to dislike Trevor (like the breakup got messy or something) it wouldn't be that big of a deal for him to get in touch with his daughter. I know a lot of parents who, after a few years of not really being around, grow up and mature and realize that they want a relationship with their child. Since the mother didn't legally dispute his parental rights, there's no reason that he couldn't just tell her that he feels bad about not being there all that time and really wants to get to know his daughter. It might take a little while for them to get to spending weekends together (just because the little girl would need to get to know him first) so they'd probably start with going to the playground and out for ice cream and so on and build up to the point where he really takes a more paternal role.

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."