Yes, absolutely.
Home › Memphis Child Custody › Alcohol and Custody
The Short Answer
Drinking is one of the few things that reliably moves custody. It goes straight to whether a child is safe, and courts treat it that way.
It also comes up constantly. Attorney Sam Jaber puts it plainly: nearly every divorce involving money and children includes an accusation of drinking in front of the child.
What You Actually Have to Prove
This is the part most people get wrong before they ever call a lawyer. You are not required to prove the other parent is an alcoholic, and you do not need a diagnosis from a doctor.
What has to be shown is what the drinking does to the child. Whether it puts the child in an unsafe situation, whether it affects the parent’s judgment during parenting time, and whether the child is exposed to it.
That distinction matters, because arguing over whether somebody qualifies as an alcoholic is a fight you do not need to win. Showing what happened while the child was in the car is.
The Hard Case
This is the case people search for most, and it is the one that feels hopeless.
He holds a job. There is no arrest, no accident, nothing anybody outside the house has seen. He presents well, he is calm in court, and he has an explanation for everything. Raise it in front of a judge with nothing behind it and the accusation sounds like bitterness from a bad divorce.
Because the defense depends entirely on appearances, and a blood test does not look at appearances. A PEth test measures how much alcohol has been in somebody’s system. It does not care where he works, how he dresses, or how he carries himself on the stand.
A high functioning heavy drinker produces the same number as anybody else drinking that much. That number is what turns an accusation a judge has heard a hundred times into a fact in the file.
A father who owned his own business, earned a great deal of money, and traveled constantly. Nothing about him looked like a problem. An accusation on its own would have gone nowhere.
His wife filed for divorce. Before he hired a lawyer, he agreed to take a PEth test. He stopped drinking for about four weeks first, because everything he had read online said the test covers two to four weeks. He expected to pass.
He maxed it out. Four weeks sober, and the score still came back very high.
The court ordered supervised visitation. He then showed up to one of those visits drunk, and his parenting time went to zero.
The Other Case
The opposite problem. Here the proof is usually not hard, because it already exists. DUIs. Lost jobs. People who have seen it. Hospital visits. A trail that somebody else created and wrote down.
What is harder is the timeline, because the child is in the situation right now and a custody case takes months.
The Tests
A blood test that is specific to alcohol. For most people it shows roughly the last month of drinking, and a sober weekend does not beat it.
For a serious drinker it runs much longer. The two to four week window repeated all over the internet describes a typical drinker. In this firm’s experience a PEth test can look back six months on a heavy drinker, because the score maxes out and stays elevated long after the drinking stops.
Reaches back three to six months, depending on the length of the hair tested. Courts can order both tests, which covers half a year.
Remote breath testing on a set schedule, with the results reported. Testing is scheduled rather than random, and the device uses facial recognition so there is no argument about who blew into it.
There are two common versions: testing only around parenting time, and daily testing. It has been ordered as a condition of parenting time in Shelby County, and Attorney William Young has had it ordered in juvenile court. Whether it gets ordered depends heavily on the judge.
What Holds Up
One piece of evidence rarely carries an alcohol case. Testimony from the other parent alone gets discounted as a person with a reason to exaggerate. Documents alone tend to show isolated events from a while ago.
What moves a judge is several kinds of evidence pointing the same direction.
Hard to explain away, and easy to take with a phone already in your hand.
Official records are generally admissible without dragging in a witness. An arrest report by itself is a different matter, because the officer or the person who gave the officer the information usually has to testify.
These are underused. They show not just that alcohol was bought but how much and how often, which is exactly the volume question a high functioning drinker will not concede.
Statements from the drinker are among the most persuasive evidence there is.
Neighbors, family, anyone who was there. Corroboration is what removes the sting of "she is just saying that."
If the other parent claims to have it handled, attendance records tend to say otherwise.
Before You Request It
In Shelby County Juvenile Court, asking the court to test the other parent generally means you are getting tested too. In circuit and chancery it is less predictable, and a judge can order one party tested and not the other.
Suspicion Is Not Evidence
A father with equal parenting time believed the children’s mother was drinking while she had them. He was right. A petition built on his suspicion alone would have gone nowhere. Instead an investigator documented it, and the result was supervised visitation and a modified support obligation.
An attorney cannot be a witness in his own case. If a fact needs proving, somebody else has to prove it. How proof gets made →
If You Are the One Accused
Given how far back these tests reach, the time to stop drinking is now, not the week before a hearing.
The father above agreed to a PEth test on his own, dried out for four weeks, and assumed he would pass because of what he read online. That single decision cost him his parenting time.
He eventually hired this firm, and the road back has been slow. It took two PEth tests four months apart, showing the number coming down, to get him returned to supervised visitation. A bad result is not the end, but it is measured in months and it is expensive.
A parent who is not drinking can ask to be monitored. An unbroken run of negative results is the cleanest answer there is to an accusation, and it is far more convincing than denying it from the witness stand.
A picture of you with a drink in hand will end up in front of the judge. So will the caption.
PEth measures how much, not just whether. Arguing about the quantity after a high result tends to make it worse.
Arrests
Any criminal arrest can affect custody. It is a change in circumstances, and it can reopen a parenting plan that was otherwise settled.
A DUI does more than that in a custody case. It feeds straight into the accusation that a parent abuses alcohol. A DUI with a child in the car is worse still.
If You Are the One Accusing
The accusation gets attention. Proof is what holds up.
Dates, times, and exactly what you saw, recorded at the time rather than reconstructed later.
Texts, photos, receipts, statements. Most people delete the thing that would have proved it.
That is how the case above was won.
Your Attorney
Sam Jaber · Divorce & Family Law
Attorney Sam Jaber handles divorce and custody in Shelby County circuit and chancery court. He has practiced family law in Memphis for over a decade and finalized more than 100 divorces in 2025.
Contested divorce → · Custody modification → · About Sam Jaber →
William Young · Of Counsel · Juvenile Court
Attorney William Young handles dependency and neglect in Shelby County Juvenile Court on both sides, along with custody for parents who were never married. He knows the rules of evidence cold, which in that building matters more than it should have to.
Dependency & neglect → · Grandparent custody → · About William Young →
Common Questions
You do not have to prove alcoholism. You have to prove what the drinking does to the child, and no diagnosis is required. A PEth blood test, combined with records, messages, and witnesses, is what moves a judge.
The high functioning drinker's defense is that nothing looks wrong, and that defense holds up until there is a test result. PEth measures how much alcohol has been in someone's system regardless of whether they hold a job or present well in court. It is the strongest evidence available for a claim that would otherwise look baseless.
The proof is usually easier because it already exists in DUIs, lost jobs, hospital visits, and people who have seen it. The harder problem is time. If a child is in danger now, an emergency custody motion can be heard within days rather than waiting months for a custody case.
Yes. Alcohol goes directly to whether a child is safe, and it is one of the few things that reliably moves custody. High-conflict custody cases almost always involve an accusation of alcohol abuse, and in Memphis it moves the needle more than it arguably should.
For most people roughly the last month, which is the two to four week window repeated all over the internet. For a serious drinker it runs much longer. In this firm's experience a PEth test can look back six months on a heavy drinker, because the score maxes out and stays elevated long after the drinking stops. A hair test also reaches back three to six months, and courts can order both.
Remote breath testing on a set schedule, with results reported. Testing is scheduled rather than random and the device uses facial recognition. There are two common versions, one covering only parenting time and one requiring daily testing. It has been ordered in Shelby County, including in juvenile court, and whether it is ordered depends heavily on the judge.
Yes. Testing can be ordered as part of the case. What gets ordered, and against whom, depends on the court and the judge.
In Shelby County Juvenile Court, generally yes. In circuit and chancery it is less predictable, and a judge can order one party tested and not the other.
Several kinds pointing the same direction. Photos and video, certified copies of criminal and traffic convictions, bank and credit card records showing how much and how often alcohol was bought, texts and voicemails from the drinker, witnesses who are not you, and records of missed treatment. Testimony from the other parent alone tends to get discounted.
It moves the needle in Memphis more than it should, but an accusation alone is easy to attack. Test results, written records, messages, and independent documentation are what hold up.
Not necessarily. The two to four week window repeated all over the internet describes a typical drinker. A heavy drinker can stop for four weeks and still max out the test, and this firm has handled exactly that case. Do not assume you will pass, and do not agree to a test before talking to a lawyer.
Yes, but slowly. In one case it took two PEth tests four months apart, showing the number coming down, to move a father from no parenting time back to supervised visitation. A bad result is not permanent, but the road back is measured in months.
Sometimes, and only after talking to your attorney. A parent who is not drinking can build an unbroken run of negative results, which answers the accusation better than any denial. A parent who is still drinking hands the other side its best exhibit.
It can. Any criminal arrest can affect custody because it is a change in circumstances. A DUI does more in a custody case because it feeds directly into an accusation that a parent abuses alcohol, and a DUI with a child in the car is worse still.
Free consultation, whichever side of the accusation you are on.