Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving Stops Alleged Absentee Mother from Taking Child from Unwed Father

Feb. 22, 2013 - PRLog -- The real risks that the law poses for a responsible and caring unwed father recently became all too clear when the Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd. had to do legal battle to prevent an alleged absentee mother (http://www.livestrong.com/article/261807-child-behavior-problems-with-an-absent-mother/) from taking a boy from his primary caretaker.  

Though the father in question resided with the child, attending to all his emotional and physical needs and sending him to a local charter school, he had no legal proof that he was his son’s biological father. Thus, starting in August, the mother, who, according to court documents, hadn’t expressed an interest in the boy for most of his life, picked him up from school without the permission of the unwed father, leaving the father terrified about the boy’s whereabouts.

The school told the father without a court order even an absentee mother could not be prevented from removing a child from school grounds.

“The father, although being the real interested party in his son’s life, had no legal rights and was being forced out by the mother,” explained Leslie Poole, a Chicago divorce attorney (http://dadsrights.com/index.php/attorney-leslie-poole/) who focuses on custody and finance issues in divorce.

The mother instructed the school to bar the father from picking up the child. As the child’s normal routine became disrupted, his grades fell, but unfortunately the unwed father was also blocked from the boy’s school records.  

Poole and his client alleged the mother sought custody of the child to raise her income from state welfare. The absentee mother has three other children, 2, 5, and 7, and when the older boy visited her one-room apartment, she forced him to baby-sit them, sometimes requiring him to miss school while she went on errands. The boy also had to sleep on the floor in the small space because the mother gave him no bed.

Poole, who has a highly successful track record in child custody and paternity litigation, established the unwed father as the child’s legal parent and won him sole custody. He also secured a court order to ban the absentee mother from the school.  

This is the latest big legal win for unmarried fathers by The Law Offices of Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd., which is well-known for fathers’ rights cases involving a host of public figures. For more information on Jeffery M. Leving, Ltd., contact Jennifer Whiteside at (312) 296-3666.