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Attorney Bio

Sugar Land Attourney Lester Van Slyke, Jr. has over 30 years experience in handling Family Law, Criminal Law, and Personal Injury Law matters in Fort Bend County and surrounding counties. Licensed to practice by the State Bar of Texas, United States Supreme Court, and the United States District Court, Southern District of Texas.

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The Law Office of Lester Van Slyke
500 Morton Street
Richmond, Texas 77469
Phone: 281.342.6148
Facsimile: 281.232.5712
Email: vanslyke500@sbcglobal.net

Free Consultation

Sugar Land, Fort Bend Family Lawyer

In Sugar Land and vicinity, there are few areas of practice more pertinent to the ties that bind than family law. Throughout Fort Bend County, a community known for close-knit families, the likes of separation, divorce and dissipation can prove especially painful. Family-related cases encompass a wide range of other subjects: Visitation, child support and custody battles, adoptions, division of property and restraining orders, among others.

Clearly, such lawsuits have the potential to become bristling and end in ruins. Don't go it alone: Let a seasoned, engaging Sugar Land family lawyer take the reins and help guide you toward compensation in a confident, dignified manner. Whatever your legal battles on the home front or any relatives, you can persevere with your case in the right hands.

Divorce Attorney

For a divorce to be filed in Texas, a party must have been a resident of Texas for at least 6 months and a resident of the county in which the divorce is to be filed for a minimum of 90 days. Once the divorce is filed, there is a statutory waiting period of 60 days before the divorce can be granted. Upon the granting of divorce after the 60 day period, there then remains a period of 30 days from the date of the decree until a party may remarry.

Child Custody + Visitation

All aspects of a divorce are stressful, but possibly nothing is tougher than deciding custody and visitation. If the parties cannot agree, the court must determine whether the children’s best interests are served by staying with their mother or their father. At the Law Offices of Lester Van Slyke, I am also concerned with the best interests of the children, and work hard to see that our clients achieve their goals.

Custody and visitation matters go beyond just picking a parent with whom the children will live. In the state of Texas, there are several types of custody arrangements. A Joint Managing Conservatorship, in which the parents jointly make decisions about the child, is the most widely used. In this scenario, the Primary Joint Managing Conservator is the parent who receives child support and determines where the child lives. Also, a Sole Managing Conservatorship can be imposed, in which one parent makes all the major decisions about the child’s upbringing.

Similarly, visitation is not always simple. The typical visitation arrangement is to let the children stay with the non-custodial parent during the first, third, and fifth weekends of the month, and two (2) hours on one (1) weekday.

We can also work to get visitation schedules enforced if they are being refused. Often, circumstances change, and modifications need to be made to custody, visitation, or child support. With 30 years of experience in family law, in and out of the courtroom, I can handle this for you.

Texas courts generally tend to resolve the issue of custody of the children of a marriage whereby the parties are appointed “Joint Managing Conservators” with each party essentially sharing in the rights to the child/children equally. (This can be limited or expanded to provide one parent with varying rights for the child)