Filing for child custody in California follows a defined path, but the right path depends on your situation. This guide walks through how you actually open a custody matter, the forms involved, and what happens after you file.
First: which case does your custody request belong to?
Custody is almost never filed as a stand-alone case. If you are married to the other parent, custody is decided inside your divorce or legal separation. If you were never married, custody is decided inside a parentage (paternity) case, which first establishes the legal parent-child relationship. And in an emergency involving abuse, custody orders can be part of a domestic violence restraining order. Knowing how to file for custody in California starts with identifying which of these frameworks applies to you.
The forms: filing a Request for Order
Within the correct case, you ask the court to make custody orders by filing a Request for Order on Form FL-300, attaching a Child Custody and Visitation Application Attachment (Form FL-311) that spells out the parenting plan you are requesting, and supporting it with a declaration of facts. You file the paperwork with the clerk, the court assigns a hearing date, and you must have the other parent formally served with the papers. If you have no existing case, you first open one by filing the underlying petition — a dissolution petition or a parentage petition — before or together with your Request for Order.
Custody mediation comes before the hearing
California requires parents in a contested custody matter to attend mediation — called Child Custody Recommending Counseling in many counties — before the judge decides the dispute, under Family Code section 3170. A neutral counselor meets with both parents to try to reach an agreed parenting plan. In counties like Orange and Riverside, the counselor may make a recommendation to the court if the parents do not agree. Taking mediation seriously matters: a plan you help craft is almost always better than one imposed after a hearing.
What the judge decides
If mediation does not resolve everything, the judge decides custody at the hearing under the best-interest-of-the-child standard (Family Code sections 3011 and 3020), which weighs the child’s health, safety, and welfare, the history of care, and each parent’s ability to co-parent. The resulting order sets both legal and physical custody and a detailed parenting plan. Because that first order sets the baseline that later modifications must overcome, how you present your case from the day you file is critical.
Talk to Furubotten Law
Every page on this site ends the same way it began: with a real lawyer. If you are navigating any of the issues discussed above, Denise Furubotten, Esq. brings 30 years of California family law experience to your matter. Call Furubotten Law, APC at (714) 795-3862 to schedule a confidential evaluation.