Visistation rights for non-custodial mother

Most people run to court and lose. Others do the following. Hire a private investigator to determine his exact address. Go to his address when you have visitation. Visitation must be explicitly identified by date and time. If he refuses to hand over the children call police to enforce the order.

The resulting police report is evidence of a withheld visit. If the police charge him with the failure to follow a court order, then you can go to court.

This scenario is played out all across the country and is referred to as the parental "freeze out". You get an order of "joint" parenting and a "liberal" visitation order that fails to specify date, time and place and he disappears forever.

As to child support, Congress decoupled the obligation to pay child support from the obligation to provide visitation. So, if your opponent kidnapped your kid to the South Pole, the government would come after you for the support payments he would be enforcing in absentia.

This means he did not "kidnap" them from you. Ordinarily, you should be able to flip back the children in this case because of his failure to foster a relationship with you, however, in reality, this does not happen. You'll be blamed for failing to pursue him wherever it is he went and you'll hear references to you allowing the passage of time to cure his absconding with your children.

You should carefully document the times and dates when you've been denied visitation. You then must obtain a valid address for this noncooperating parent where he can be served with court papers. Then go to the court having jurisdiction over the matter and request to file what's called a Rule to Show Cause against the noncooperating parent. (If the matter is within the jurisdiction of the J&DR Court, you can do it yourself, however, if it's still up in the circuit court, you'll likely need a lawyer to handle it.)

M.E. Hendrickson, Esq.
Alexandria, Virginia 22314