Bristol Palin fights legal battle over child’s custody

After a Superior court judge denied Sarah Palin’s daughter’s plea to keep the court’s proceeding under wraps, a legal custody battle between Bristol Palin and the father of her child has been exposed.

However, considering the request, the court issued a temporary order permitting the use of pseudonyms during the hearings. The order stated that no good "could result to the child by an onslaught of media."

Battle for custody
Stressing on open court proceedings, Levi Johnston, Bristol’s ex-fiancé and father of 1-year-old Tripp, said he "just wants a simple case on the merits."

In his affidavit, Johnston said, "I do not feel protected against Sarah Palin in a closed proceeding. I hope that if it is open she will stay out of it. Bristol's attorney is her attorney."

Pushing for open proceedings, Johnston’s attorney Rex Butler wrote, "This case presents a custody case with similar facts that attend open cases every day in the Alaska court system."

Objecting to Johnston’s “sporadic visitation rights”, Bristol sought a visitation schedule for her ex-fiancé along with sole custody and child support of her son. The petition was filed in early November this year.

In his court documents, Johnston has denied having shrugged off his responsibilities. While Bristol has petitioned for sole custody of her child, Johnston has sought shared custody.

In addition to this, Bristol has also sought that Sherry Johnston, Levi’s mother, should not be permitted to make unsupervised visits to Tripp. The concerns about her visits were raised following her drug arrest, for which she is serving a three-year sentence.

Bristol’s custody petition also points towards Levi Johnston’s indulgence in substance abuse, referring to a tweet by Johnston seeking “weed”.

However, Johnston rubbished this claim and said that he did not have an account on the social networking site. He further added that the Twitter account that Bristol was referring to was fake.