Establish a New Court Order

If you have not been to court on the issue of visitation before, then you may need to establish a court order. A visitation rights court order is the order from a judge that legally allocates scheduled time for you to have with your child, thus ensuring that you are able to see your child regardless of whether the other party agrees or not. Family courts exist to prevent conflicts in relationships between parents from negatively impacting your child.

Visitation rights schedules vary greatly depending on the age of the child and the schedule of a child's schooling and activities. Also work schedules and the availability of each parent are considered by the court.. The most common visitation arrangement provides that a parent with whom the child does not primarily live gets visitation with the child every other weekend or other scheduled times and days during the week. The court can help you arrange schedules for increased visitation time when the child is out of school (such as summer and spring break) and also for fair division of holiday time with the child.

When you speak with your provider attorney, share with them your priorities and together you can put together a game plan on what will be the best visitation rights arrangement for you and your child. Once the best parenting plan is outlined, your attorney will assist you in filing an enforceable order from the courts.

Modify an Existing Court Order

If a judge has already signed an order creating a visitation schedule for you and your child the circumstances of either the child or the parents may have changed in such a way that the existing order is no longer a workable arrangement. For instance, if you took a new job requiring you to work on weekends, it may be necessary to change the existing visitation arrangements so that you can have more time with your child during the week. Courts can help make these modifications. Keep in mind that the courts' standard is always the best interests of your child.

Your provider attorney will advise you on whether you have the grounds to go back to court and modify your current custody or visitation rights order. If you do, then the attorney can assist you in presenting appropriate facts to the judge that will support why it is in the best interest of your child to have the parenting arrangement changed.

Enforce an Existing Court Order

When you already have a court order in place, you may need help with enforcing that order. When visitation under your existing order is not being honored, the court can force the other party to grant you visitation through the imposition of fines, jail confinement, or in certain cases, changing where the child lives.

Explain to your provider attorney the challenges you have been dealing with for your visitation. If visitation has been denied, the attorney may discuss with you whether it is time to file a motion with the court to get your visitation order enforced. If so, your attorney will assist you in organizing and presenting evidence that your visitation order has not been honored by the other party, so the courts can take necessary actions to enforce your visitation rights.

Supervised or Unsupervised Visitation

Visitation with a child is typically unsupervised. There are rare circumstances when a court may order supervised visitation. This order requires a designated person (a family member or close relative) or an agency to oversee parental visitation. This occurs when the court considers the parent represents a danger to the child, such as when drugs or alcohol abuse have been involved.

If you believe the unsupervised visitation order needs to be changed to supervised, or if you believe the visitation order is unjustly supervised and you would like to remove the supervision requirement, speak with your unbundled attorney about your concerns. Your attorney can advise you on how the courts will view your case and provide assistance in presenting critical facts to the judge in support of your belief that this change is in the best interests of your child.