In Texas parents have a right to ask a jury to decide which parent determines the primary residence of the child. There are a host of reasons to select a jury, one of the most obvious being you don’t want the Judge making that decision. Juries however are precluded from making decisions about child support, possession & access, and the assignment of other rights and duties.
A case out of the Houston Court of Appeals, Rogers v. Rogers, 2016 WL 3162299, Court of Appeal of Texas, Houston (1st Dist.), undercuts the power of the jury substantially. In this case, the father prevailed and was appointed the parent with the right to determine the primary residence by the jury. The Judge then ordered that the mother would determine the school the children would attend, so long as it was within the geographic area in which the father could determine the residence, which in this case was Fort Bend County and contiguous counties. The case is silent on the distance between the parents, what school the mother had chosen and what the possession schedule was, but it’s clear the father could, and considering he appealed, probably did walk away from winning a jury trial only to find his children enrolled in school 100 miles away from his home.
There are cases where it’s smart to select a Jury, but you must always take into account that Judges are empowered regardless.