Leandra Vandyke
Partner
Custody and kinship care.
Leandra works on the part of a child welfare case that decides where a child lives and who decides for them. She helps parents ask for a custody order that can bring an agency's involvement to a close, and she helps grandparents, aunts and family friends who have taken a child in and need legal footing to keep them.
Handles
- Custody orders
- Kinship care
- Visitation
- Guardianship by relatives
Admissions, courts and schooling
Bar admissions
Maryland
2016
District of Columbia
2018
Courts
Circuit Court for Montgomery County
District Court of Maryland
Appellate Court of Maryland
Education
J.D., American University Washington College of Law
B.A., Goucher College
Languages
English
French
What Leandra asks relatives first
Grandparents and other relatives often call after a child has already moved in. The first thing Leandra asks is who has the right to decide about school, doctors and travel today, because the honest answer is often nobody, and that is fixable.
She explains the choices side by side: an informal arrangement, a custody order, a guardianship, or a formal placement through the agency. Each carries different rights, different oversight and different help with costs. She doesn't push one over another before she has seen your papers.
When she works with a parent, she keeps one question at the center: what would the court need to see to feel comfortable closing the file? Then she builds toward it, step by step, with dates.
A child should never have to wait for the adults to work out who is allowed to sign the permission slip.