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How to Enforce Child Visitation Rights

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What constitutes a parenting time violation and ways to enforce your visitation rights.

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Child visitation laws give parents the right to spend time with their children. Typically outlined in your court-ordered parenting plan through a custody schedule, these rights allow parents to have physical custody of their children for specific periods. While some situations result in one parent having sole custody due to limiting factors, courts across the U.S. usually prefer to grant joint physical custody that enables children to spend time with both parents. The parent with less time with their child is the non-custodial parent, who must work with their child's other parent to ensure they have the visitation rights entitled to them in their parenting plan. Because custody schedules are official legal documents, parents are legally required to comply and can face consequences if they don't. While many instances of violations can occur by accident, others can be made with the intent to affect the other parent's time with their child. Determining potential infractions and enforcing child visitation rights is a serious matter, and violations often come with harsh consequences to maintain the safety and well-being of the children involved. Learn about how to identify visitation violations and what you can do to address them.

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What constitutes a visitation rights violation?

A violation occurs when a parent unknowingly or willfully fails to comply with the terms or arrangements in their visitation agreement in a way that alters the child's expected custody schedule. While they can be caused by the person losing their parenting time, they also often occur due to parenting time failures caused by their child's other parent. Many actions could be considered parenting time violations, but they all share a root impact of affecting someone's visitation rights. While the exact circumstances can vary by state, the following are some common violations of a parent's visitation rights:

How can I enforce my visitation rights?

Even with friendly separations, it's not uncommon for parents to have conflicts or legitimate reasons that lead them to withhold visitation. In these cases, co-parents can work together to schedule make-up dates for lost parenting time and avoid violating their custody agreement. For more contentious co-parenting relationships, having somewhat difficult discussions or struggling to make alternative arrangements that meet the terms of your parenting plan can seem like impossible tasks. If collaboration is not an option, here are 4 steps that can help with enforcing child visitation rights.

Mother and child video calling

1. Document any violations

Regardless of who is responsible for missing the visitation, parenting time failures often negatively affect parents and their children. Whether it's a first-time occurrence or a repeated issue, both parents should create and maintain a detailed record of any situations that impact their parenting time. These records should offer thorough documentation of all interactions related to the violation.

Sufficient documentation may include:

When parents need to keep detailed documentation of their shared parenting situation, a co-parenting communication service can be beneficial compared to manually tracking their interactions. With TalkingParents, all written and phone conversations are documented in an Unalterable Record that can be used as a personal chronology or presented as court-admissible evidence. Secure Messaging ensures every written message is timestamped when delivered and read. Accountable Calling includes recordings and automatically generated transcripts of calls conducted through the service.

2. Contact law enforcement

If your co-parent willfully infringes on your visitation rights, you may feel compelled to take matters into your own hands and get your child from them. While this decision could be effective, it could result in more negative outcomes than positive results. In these cases, you can contact local law enforcement agencies to address the issue. Working with local authorities often involves filing a police report and getting law enforcement officers to enforce visitation until the matter can be discussed in court.

If the child is not home at the time set in the visitation order, for example, and efforts to call the non-custodial parent are unsuccessful, police may physically escort the custodial parent to the non-custodial parent's home and enforce a custody exchange. In situations where these issues persist, future custody exchanges can occur under police supervision to ensure things go smoothly and safely for everyone involved. Working with law enforcement and filing a police report is an additional way to document a denial of visitation, which can help in a custody case.

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3. Seek legal assistance

When co-parents cannot work together to settle issues, visitation agreements can usually be sorted by involving an unbiased, professional third party like a family law mediator. Mediation sessions can help you and your child's other parent identify relevant issues impacting visitation rights and reach some form of mutual compromise. If you want to pursue a more concrete method that results in actionable resolutions, choosing family law arbitration is an alternative to mediation that ends with a legally enforceable plan.

If your co-parent refuses to comply or your child's well-being is in danger, consulting a local family law attorney may be necessary to understand your options in the context of your state's laws. While working with an attorney can bring substantial legal expenses, a co-parenting communication service like TalkingParents can help you save thousands in attorney's fees by optimizing your time under legal guidance. Additionally, free and low-cost resources are available if you can't afford a lawyer but still need legal assistance.

4. File a motion to appear in court

Given that it is rarely legal to deny visitation without a valid court order, sometimes it is necessary to go back to court. While guidelines vary from state to state, filing paperwork to enforce visitation rights can result in a range of solutions, including severe legal repercussions if a parent is found to have denied visitation. Doing so can also jumpstart the process of making any necessary changes to your parenting plan, whether it's by adding helpful provisions or substantially altering your custody agreement.

If you choose to file a motion for a hearing related to your parenting plan, bringing evidence to family court is a critical task that can directly impact the outcome of your case. Once you collect anything that could qualify as evidence, you must review and present anything relevant in an organized, court-acceptable format. With TalkingParents, any action and interaction you and your co-parent take within the service is documented in your Records. This level of automatic documentation saves significant time and effort in preparing for court.

Smooth co-parenting is no easy feat, and the process is even more complicated if you're considering your options for enforcing your visitation rights. While it's entirely possible to navigate the situation independently, TalkingParents is here to streamline your co-parenting and support you with the accountability and security you need and deserve. Learn more about our features and how they can help protect your visitation rights and your child's well-being.