Chandler Divorce Lawyer - Can a parent refuse to allow visitation if child support is not paid?
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Posted On :
Jan-05-2011
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Article Word Count :
746
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You know, I understand that question because so many people say, “You know, it’s so unfair. He or she isn’t paying child support, yet they still visit. Here I am bearing the burden of making all the payments to insure that...
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You know, I understand that question because so many people say, “You know, it’s so unfair. He or she isn’t paying child support, yet they still visit. Here I am bearing the burden of making all the payments to insure that my child has a roof over his head, and the other parent isn’t paying but they expect visitation.”
The answer is no, you can’t do that.
You have to allow the other parent visitation privileges regardless of whether they’re paying child support or not. And if you fail to allow them visitation, that can effect your own visitation. The court will not accept the response that you’ve failed to allow the parent visitation because they’re not paying child support. They’re two completely separate issues. The court does not tie child support payments to visitation privileges.
It’s really important to understand that … that they are completely legally independent of one another. Because what you can do is you can bring suit to compel the other party to pay their child support. One of the questions the court is going to ask of you is have you been allowing visitation. If you have, really you’re coming to the court with clean hands, so to speak. That’s the information you want to be able to give.
Don’t ever stop visitation because you’re not receiving child support. Instead, simply turn around, tell the other party that you’re going to enforce the order that’s causing them to pay the child support, and then proceed to go to court to get those monies back along with arrearages.
That’s a much better solution than stopping visitation because of that.
What impact could a parent’s dating have on child custody?
That’s such a good question. A lot of divorces…I shouldn’t say maybe a lot, but some divorces are caused because one parent has found a significant other in their life and has decided to divorce.
Now, the impact that this can have is Arizona follows a guideline by which it says there shouldn’t really be any dating within three months of the divorce. Now, of course, if you have a relationship at the time of the divorce, that can really impact your custody agreement. It can impact it in a couple of ways.
One, the court kind of frowns upon it in the sense that they really believe that there should be kind of a cooling off period there where neither party is involved with anyone else and their attention is really focused on their children to get the children through that impact of divorce. They sort of have, like I said, kind of like a meter of about 90 days.
Now that’s not really an enforceable rule. It’s more of a guideline. That’s something that the court looks at.
Where the impact comes the most is where your spouse or your soon-to-be ex-spouse finds out about this relationship. You always have to agree with the other parent when you’re putting together a custody and visitation agreement.
If you can’t get their agreement--and in a large part you might not be able get it because they’re very upset about this new relationship and they don’t think it’s appropriate that your children be visiting with this new party, seeing them possibly as a new parent almost--that’s where you’ve really fall into the greatest problems.
My suggestion to people who are dating while they are going through a divorce is to really not have that around your children, first and foremost. And if you can wait the 90 days, it’s so much better for you. You’re more likely to get an agreement with your soon-to-be ex-spouse. The two of you can model your parenting plan and your visitation around the things that you think are most important.
And there isn’t this big red herring of there’s another party involved in here and bringing it up to the court … putting it in the court’s hands to make a decision knowing that the court may fall back on the plan of not having any dating for 90 days. You’re better off simply not doing it and trying to reach in settlement about visitation and custody with your spouse first before you start dating.
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Article Source :
http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Chandler Divorce Lawyer - Can a parent refuse to allow visitation if child support is not paid?_47366.aspx
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Author Resource :
To get additional information on your divorce options please visit our web site at http://cmthompsonlaw.com
Christy Thompson, your Chandler Divorce Lawyer
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Keywords :
chandler divorce lawyer, chandler divorce attorney, mesa divorce lawyer, mesa divorce attorney, gilbert divorce lawyer,
Category :
Society
:
Divorce
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