Child Custody Lawyer Austin: Eleven Rights and Three Myths

Texas does not use the word “custody.” A child custody lawyer Austin parents hire will not file a pleading that contains it. The code uses conservatorship for decision-making, and possession and access for time.

That is not a vocabulary quibble. What parents actually contest is an enumerated list — a set of specific rights and duties written into one section of the Family Code. Whoever holds them picks where the child lives, signs the surgical consent, and keeps the passport.

So the rights come first here. Three myths follow, each one a thing Texas law does not say. The schedules come last, because they follow from the rights rather than the reverse.

What a child custody lawyer Austin parents consult argues over: § 153.132

Section 153.132 sets out the exclusive rights and duties of a parent the court appoints sole managing conservator, and the list now runs to eleven items rather than the ten most secondary summaries still show. Any ten-item list circulating online is stale. The eleven include:

• the right to designate the child’s primary residence;
• the right to consent to medical, dental and surgical treatment involving invasive procedures;
• the right to consent to psychiatric and psychological treatment;
• the right to receive and give receipt for child support;
• the right to represent the child in legal action;
• the right to consent to marriage and to enlistment in the armed forces;
• the right to make decisions concerning the child’s education;
• the right to apply for and maintain possession of the child’s passport;
• the right to the services and earnings of the child; and
• a recently added right concerning designation of the child’s school and enrollment.

Read the list as separate levers rather than one prize. A court can split them. Two parents can share the education decision and still fight over the passport, so an order reading “joint managing conservatorship” says little until you find out which of the eleven sit where. The full text sits in Chapter 153 of the Texas Family Code.

The presumption underneath all of it: §§ 153.002 and 153.131

Two provisions frame every argument about those rights. Section 153.002 makes the best interest of the child the primary consideration. S.B. 2052, from the 89th Legislature and effective September 1, 2025, retitled and amended that section, and it added weight on the parental side of one contest: where a parent litigates against a non-parent, the parent’s rights now carry a presumption the non-parent must overcome by clear and convincing evidence.

Section 153.131 runs parallel. Unless the court finds that appointing a parent would significantly impair the child’s physical health or emotional development, it must appoint a parent as managing conservator. Relatives contesting a parent start from behind, and the statute says so in terms.

Myth one: what a child custody lawyer Austin parents call hears about turning 12

The most durable myth in Texas family law is that a child gets to choose at 12. It traces to a real provision that no longer exists. The Legislature repealed § 153.008, the child-preference-designation section, and it is simply gone from the current code.

What survives is narrower and procedural. Under § 153.009, on a party’s motion the court shall interview a child 12 or older in chambers about the person who will hold the exclusive right to designate the primary residence. The court may interview a younger child on the same subject. So the twelfth birthday changes one thing: whether the interview is mandatory on request.

Then the part that decides cases. Section 153.009(c) preserves the court’s full discretion. The judge hears the child and stays free to order something the child did not ask for. It is not a vote — it is testimony the court weighs against everything else in front of it.

Myth two: “there’s a standard geographic restriction”

Parents trade mileage numbers constantly. Fifty miles, a hundred miles, contiguous counties. Here is what the statute requires instead.

Section 153.134(b)(1) gives the court two options and demands one of them. The court must either designate a geographic area within which the conservator has to maintain the child’s primary residence, or state that the primary residence may be anywhere “without regard to geographic location.” One or the other, in the order.

Now the precise point. The Family Code never uses the phrase “geographic restriction”, and it prescribes no radius and no mileage figure. Every specific number a parent has heard came out of an order, a drafting habit or a negotiation. None of it came from the statute. That matters when a parent wants to move, because no default exists to fall back on — only the words in the file.

Myth three: “expanded possession is something you ask for”

This one was true and then stopped being true. Section 153.3171 changed the default, and since September 1, 2021 expanded standard possession applies automatically where the conservator lives within 50 miles of the child’s primary residence. Only a few narrow off-ramps exist.

So the parent no longer elects it. Under the old practice a parent asked, and a court granted or refused. Now the expanded schedule is what the order gives unless something takes it away. Two competing 2021 versions disagree about an internal cross-reference, which is a drafting artifact — the effect on the calendar is the same.

The Texas possession and access schedule a child custody lawyer Austin parents work from

The default calendar is the standard possession order, and distance picks which version of it applies. The Texas possession and access schedule therefore has two shapes.

Where the parents live 100 miles or less apart, § 153.312 gives the possessory conservator the first, third and fifth weekends of each month, a Thursday evening period during the school year, and a 30-day summer period.

Where they live more than 100 miles apart, § 153.313 rebuilds the year. Summer stretches to 42 days. Spring break goes to the possessory conservator every year instead of alternating. And the weekend pattern converts into an election: one weekend per month, exercised on 14 days’ notice.

Notice what the mile figures do. They do not restrict where anyone may live. They switch which schedule the order runs on, and a move across the 100-mile line changes the calendar without anyone relitigating the rights.

Family violence and the two-year lookback in § 153.004

Section 153.004 sits outside the ordinary framework, and it has its own time frame. The court looks back two years before the filing date, or during the pendency of the suit, for a history or pattern of family violence or sexual abuse.

Two consequences follow from a finding. The section bars the appointment of joint managing conservators, and it limits access to the child. Courts treat it as a constraint on discretion they otherwise hold, which is why the question generally gets litigated first and separately.

What a child custody lawyer Austin parents return to files later: §§ 156.101 and 156.102

Orders change, and Chapter 156 governs how. Section 156.101 carries the general modification standard. Section 156.102 adds a filter that catches people off guard.

Where a parent seeks to change the child’s primary residence within one year of the existing order, the motion has to arrive with a supporting affidavit. If the affidavit does not contain the required facts, the court must deny the motion and refuse to schedule a hearing on it. No evidence gets heard.

Read that as a screening rule, not a ruling on the merits. The court has not decided the move is wrong. It has decided the paperwork does not open the door yet, and the second attempt lives or dies on what the affidavit says.

Austin conservatorship cases and how Travis County assigns them

An austin conservatorship case does not land in a family court, because Travis County does not have one in the statutory sense. Government Code Chapter 24, Subchapter D creates designated family district courts in a list of counties, and Travis County is not on that list. Its 12 district courts are generalist and undesignated. For comparison, our guide to what custody means in Arizona now covers another state that dropped the word from its statutes.

Assignment works accordingly. Under the local rules, new filings go out on a rotating basis among the district courts, and hearings then go to whichever judge is available rather than staying with the filing court. Travis also runs separate family and child-protection docket tracks. A parent can face more than one judge across a case, so the written record outweighs any single appearance.

Associate judges hear family matters in Travis County, and here the clock is brutally short. Sections 201.015 and 201.1042 give a party who wants the referring court to review an associate judge’s proposed order just three working days to request a de novo hearing. Miss it and the review right is gone.

One more local rule binds parents before anyone appears. The Travis County Standing Order for Family Law Cases, effective January 1, 2020, applies automatically the moment a family case is filed — nobody requests it. It prohibits, among other things, removing or concealing a child from the other party, and disparaging the other party in front of the child. Many parents never learn it exists until someone accuses them of breaking it.

The bottom line

The statute is precise about the eleven rights, the mile figures and the three working days. It is silent on the thing that usually decides the case: which parent a judge finds credible on a crowded docket, in a county where the file may pass among generalist courts. That gap is where the real work sits.

And the myths cut in one direction. A parent who trusts a twelve-year-old’s choice, or a standard mileage rule, or an election that no longer exists, walks in with the wrong questions. The repealed section, the absent phrase and the automatic default all check out in an afternoon. The credibility contest behind them does not.

Keep reading: Child Custody in Arizona: What the Term Actually Means Now · Relocating With a Child in Arizona: The Notice Requirement

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This article is general information about Texas conservatorship, possession and access, and Travis County family-case procedure, not legal advice. The Family Code changes every legislative session, local rules and standing orders change on their own schedule, and the statutes described here carry the date on which they were checked. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. Anyone contesting conservatorship of a child, or seeking to modify an existing order, should consult a licensed Texas attorney about their own circumstances.

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