My question involves a child custody case from the State of: New York

My wife ran off with our son back in May. Since then, she returned from Maryland where she took our son and moved to Jersey City with our son. We both lived in New York and I still reside in NYC.

She filed for joint custody of our son. The marriage is duly over but she is not filing for divorce. She knows that I will not file due to my religious views and she wants to use that punish me. I know she will ultimately use our son to get her way, thus I am willing to just give her sole custody. She makes about 5x my salary so even if I wanted to, I cannot fight her.

My question is, can I plead with the court to delay the child custody hearing to force her to make a decision on filing for divorce…or better yet, force her to file for divorce. Can a court grant custody when both parents are still marry?

Thanks.