Today, there is less stigma surrounding the many forms of mental illness and the consequences. Yet there is no doubt that a co-parent’s mental illness can adversely affect the kids.
If you’re worried about your co-parent’s mental health, here is some information that may be helpful.
Are they diagnosed?
Does your ex have a medical history of mental health crises? If they have already been diagnosed, are they compliant with their treatment plan? The family law courts use questions like that when determining whether children will be safe if left unsupervised with their mentally ill co-parent.
Diagnoses matter with custody
Parents who are diagnosed with anxiety or mild depression may be fine when left alone with their kids. Alternatively, no court would award custody to a parent who’s actively psychotic and unmedicated.
Can you lose custody due to mental illness?
It depends. Courts aren’t trying to strip custody from parents simply because of mental health diagnoses. What matters is whether their conditions make them unfit to care for their children.
Those conditions can shift suddenly, especially if the co-parent is noncompliant with meds and/or therapy. The kids’ other parent can ask the court to require proof of compliance for the mentally ill spouse to gain custody.
There are other custody options
Supervised visitation may be necessary for some mentally ill parents. If there is any question that the children might not be safe alone with their other parent, seek supervised visitation until the situation stabilizes.
If your co-parent never gets well
There can be circumstances where the individual’s mental illness or addiction is so profound that they can never safely parent their children. In those cases, it might be necessary to terminate the parental rights of your mentally ill ex-spouse.