How to Get Guardianship of a Child in Nevada

If you believe caring for your relative, typically a child for more than the next few weeks, you will want to start gaining some sort of legal binding. This will help you provide a stable environment while also protecting the child in question.

However, this will also help you in the long run as you will be the one appointed to make all educational and medical decisions for the child when the time comes.

However, if you are indeed a relative, one way you can gain some legal binding to the child is petitioning guardianship through the Nevada state courts.

You should always keep in the back of your mind that all guardianship cases will differ from one to the other.

However, if you are still unsure about your guardianship case, everything is outlined in Chapter 159 of the Nevada Revised Statutes.

What is Guardianship of a Child?

First and foremost, a guardian is one person that was appointed to be responsible for the protected child or for another person’s estate.

A guardian is going to be a person that has the power to make big legal decisions such as medical care, schooling, religion along with other day to day life choices.

Many people think you need to adopt to make these children to make these legal choices, but adoption is yet another avenue you can go down, but that process will be a lot longer and more permanent and will cost more money.

But with guardianship it is still a legal binding paper that will allow you to still provide a stable environment as you will have the legal physical custody of the child. Plus, you can always transfer custody to someone other than the parent, if needed as well.

However, you should know that guardianship will NEVER terminate the parental rights, but you should know that it will suspend the parental rights though.

The entire point of guardianship is for the guardianship to take control without the parents’ rights. Guardianship will grant you the power to enroll the child(ren) in school, get them proper medical treatment, and make any other major decisions.

However, guardianship will have downsides as well. You will have to factor in the cost that will be to petition for guardianship. Especially, if you are using a lawyer or your petition is currently being contested. It can be quite expensive.

Not to mention all the emotional risks as well. You will have to prove in court that without a doubt you are the best person for the guardian role and that you put the child’s best interest first.

Now in the state of Nevada there are two types of guardianship options you can consider. This is what they are and what they entail.

How to Get it Without Going to Court? Six Month Temporary Guardianship

Within the state of Nevada, you can have what they call an informal type of guardianship. This type of guardianship will not require you to go to court to get the court approval.

However, this can only happen if the parents of the child in question fill out a form, which will grant you temporary guardianship of the child in question.

This temporary guardianship will allow you to make school and medical decisions. You will need to renew this temporary guardianship every six months. You will also need to keep in mind that the parents of the child can terminate this guardianship at any time either.

How to Get it With Going to Court? Legal Guardianship

Now, this type of guardianship will require you to have a court order. This one is going to be the more complicated, financial burden one out of the two types of guardianship.

This type of guardianship is going to require you to lawyer up because if you do not follow the process closely and notify the correct people with your petitions, you will automatically lose the case.