Everything we know about custody in Shelby County, in one place.
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Twenty-two pages on custody in Shelby County, written for the specific thing you are dealing with rather than for all fifty states at once. Whatever is happening, it is below. Every page tells you which building hears it, what the judge weighs, and what proof looks like.
Nothing here is written to sell you something. It is written so you can figure out where you stand before you spend a dollar. Clients tell us they hired this firm because the answers were already here. That is the point of it.
The Full Picture
Almost every custody case turns on a situation specific enough to have its own answer. Find yours.
Filings
When the State or a family member says a child should be removed. DCS moves fast enough that the first hearing can come within days.
Concrete harm to the child, already done or about to be. The court can hear it within days, but only if somebody pushes it.
Stop a tattoo, a medical decision, a school change, or a move while the real case gets filed. Fifteen days, with a hearing inside 72 hours.
What to do when the State is already at your door, and what happens to everything you say.
A de novo appeal is an entirely new trial in circuit court, not a review of the record. Ten business days to file.
A prior dependency and neglect adjudication creates a presumption as to your next child, before that case even starts.
Enforcement
When the plan is fine and the other parent will not follow it. Judges warn three or four times before they act, and what makes the fourth one land is a written record of the first three.
Everything turns on whether an order exists. With one the police have something to enforce. Without one there is nothing being violated.
Changing an order after the fact takes a material change in circumstances. The threshold is broader than people expect, so the real question is whether you can prove what you already believe.
You can. Get it wrong and the other parent’s time can increase. Get it right and the court escalates.
Unmarried Parents
No enforceable rights until an order is entered, no matter how involved you have been. Signing the birth certificate does not establish parentage.
Whether courts really favor mothers, what actually decides it, and the assumption that costs mothers their cases.
Where custody is decided when the parents were never married. Its own building, its own magistrates, its own pace.
Grandparents
There is no grandparent custody petition. The route runs through dependency and neglect, which juvenile court hears exclusively, and anyone can file it.
Visitation with a grandchild, which is a different right from custody with a different filing and a different standard.
What Decides Cases
A much higher bar than people expect. Being a difficult parent is not the standard. The question is whether a child should be removed.
Twelve is when the court must consider it. It is not when a child chooses, and a court can hear from a younger child on request.
Not on its own. It reaches custody through the new partner and reaches the money directly, through alimony and dissipation.
High-conflict cases almost always include an alcohol accusation. PEth, hair testing, Soberlink, and what holds up.
Nobody points to the day you left. They point to the six months after it. The schedule you keep is what decides your case.
Support
Fifteen percent on the worksheet and the order can be modified. It is retroactive to the day you file and no earlier, which is why waiting costs money.
Estimate support from the state schedule. Parenting days, insurance, childcare, credits for other children, and the self-support reserve.
Married or Not
The answer depends entirely on one thing, and most people do not know which side of it they are on.
A divorce produces a Permanent Parenting Plan. It names a primary residential parent and an alternate residential parent, sets a schedule day by day, and divides decision-making over school, medical care, and religion. That plan is a court order. Refusing to follow it is contempt, and it is enforceable. What enforcement actually looks like →
In Tennessee the mother of a child born outside marriage has custody and every visitation right until a court enters an order changing that. Not most of them. All of them.
That is true if you have been there since the delivery room. It is true if you pay for everything. It is true if you have had the child every weekend for three years by agreement. The day she decides you are not seeing the child anymore, there is nothing for a court to enforce, because no court has ordered anything.
The analysis runs the same way in reverse. An order is enforceable and an agreement is not. If a father is refusing to return a child and there is an order, that is contempt and potentially custodial interference. If there is no order, the first filing establishes one.
Parenting Time
Nothing in Tennessee law gives it to you and nothing keeps you from it. There is no presumption for or against joint custody, and no preference for either parent.
What the court applies is the list of best interest factors at Tennessee Code Annotated § 36-6-106. Among them: each parent’s role in performing parenting responsibilities before and after the separation. The strength and duration of the child’s relationship with each parent. Each parent’s willingness to encourage a relationship with the other. The stability of each home. Evidence of abuse. Work schedules.
Who has actually been doing the parenting. Not who says they will. Who has been taking the child to the doctor, showing up at school, handling the mornings.
Which means the case is usually won or lost on records and testimony about the last two years, and that is a question of proof rather than a question of who wants it more.
The court must consider the reasonable preference of a child twelve or older, and may hear a younger child on request. A child never chooses. What a court actually does with a child’s preference →
Before You File
Sometimes the answer is no, and you will not hear that from most firms.
A contested custody case takes months. It costs real money, and the number moves with the complexity of the proof, the number of witnesses, and whether an investigator or an evaluator gets involved. It puts your child in the middle of something for as long as it runs.
What are you actually trying to change? If the answer is a specific problem with the schedule or the other parent’s conduct, there is a case there. If the answer is that you want the other parent to lose, a courtroom is an expensive place to find out that judges do not award that.
Can you prove it? Almost everyone who calls is certain something is wrong. Very few arrive with anything a court can act on. An attorney cannot be a witness in his own case, so if a fact needs establishing, somebody else has to establish it. That is frequently what separates a filing that works from one that gets denied.
What does this look like to your child in two years? Some cases have to be fought regardless. Others get won and cost more than they returned.
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Your Attorney
Which building your case is in comes down to one question, and it decides who handles it.
William Young · Of Counsel · Juvenile Court
If you were never married to the other parent, your case is in Shelby County Juvenile Court and Attorney William Young handles it. Its own building, its own magistrates, its own pace. He also handles dependency and neglect on both sides.
Unmarried fathers → · Emergency custody → · About William Young →
Sam Jaber · Divorce & Family Law
If you are married or divorcing, the parenting plan comes out of the divorce in circuit or chancery court, and Attorney Sam Jaber handles it. Where the parties do not agree, custody gets decided inside a contested divorce. He has practiced divorce and family law in Memphis for over a decade and finalized more than 100 divorces in 2025.
Most firms in Memphis are in one of those buildings. Very few are genuinely in both.
Contested divorce → · Custody modification → · About Sam Jaber →
Common Questions
Alcohol is one of the few things that reliably moves a custody case, because it goes straight to whether a child is safe. A PEth blood test shows roughly the last month of drinking and much longer for a heavy drinker, and courts can order hair testing and remote monitoring as well. Asking for the other parent to be tested generally means you get tested too.
Not without advice first. A Department of Children's Services investigation is not a conversation, it is evidence gathering, and what you say becomes part of a record that can support a dependency and neglect petition. You are entitled to counsel before you answer questions.
A court must consider the reasonable preference of a child twelve or older. It is one factor among many, not a decision the child gets to make, and the weight it carries depends on the child and the reasons behind the preference.
On its own, almost never. Adultery can matter in a divorce on fault, alimony, and dissipation of marital assets. It reaches custody when the conduct affects the child, such as a new partner with a record of drugs or violence around the child.
The standard is higher than most people expect. Drug or alcohol abuse around the child, violence, abuse or neglect, a child not in school, medical care not provided, or a dangerous person in the home. Being difficult, disorganized, or unpleasant is not the same as being unfit.
A court can hear an emergency motion within days when there is a danger of immediate harm to the child, or a risk the child will be removed from the court's jurisdiction. The standard is probable cause, and the court can consider reliable hearsay.
A parenting plan is a court order and violating it is contempt. The remedies include make-up time, attorney fees, and in serious cases a change to the plan itself. Withholding your own compliance in response is the most common way a parent damages their own case.
You can, and it is a risk. If an order is in place you are violating it, and the court can order make-up time, fees, and even suspend your parenting time. If the concern is real, the better route is an emergency filing or a dependency and neglect petition rather than self-help.
Not unilaterally when an order is in place. Tennessee has a relocation statute with notice requirements and a window to object, and a court decides whether the move happens.
Tennessee uses an income shares model. Both parents' gross monthly incomes are combined, an obligation is read off the state schedule, and each parent owes a share proportional to their income. Parenting time of 92 days or more reduces it. Our calculator runs the state's own worksheet.
It depends on whether you were married. Custody arising from a divorce is heard in circuit or chancery court. Custody for parents who were never married, and every dependency and neglect case, is heard in Shelby County Juvenile Court.
Yes, through a dependency and neglect case in juvenile court. Custody goes to a grandparent because a court makes a finding about the parents, not because the grandparent argues they would be the better caregiver. Anyone can file the petition without waiting on DCS. Grandparent visitation is a separate and more limited statutory right.
Free consultation. Call and find out which court you are in and what your facts actually support.