5 Step Approach to Enforcing Your Visitation Rights When You Have a Custody Order in Place

In a previous article, I gave you some general information regarding your rights when you are being denied visitation.

If you are being denied visitation and there has never been a custody order regarding the minor child, I discussed the importance of getting a custody order in place in order to enforce your visitation rights and gave you some info on how to do that.

This article takes you through our five step approach to enforcing your visitation rights when you are being denied visitation and you already have a custody order in place.

Step 1 – Verify that you do in fact have a custody order in place.

• A custody order is a legal binding document signed by a Judge. It is not a document that you and the mother of your child may have signed in the parking lot at KFC on a scrap sheet of paper.

Step 2 – We need to identify the specific provisions that we are alleging the other side has violated.

• An example may be that you are to have visitation with your child every Friday beginning at 5pm and ending at 5pm on Sunday. That is just one example.

Step 3 – We then want to gather the evidence needed to support this violation.

• This evidence can take many forms. It may be a text message, an email, even an eye witness.
• One example is – you send a text message to the mother or father of your child to confirm a pick up or drop off time for your child and they send you a text message back stating that actually you are not visiting with your child this weekend because I don’t like you, or I’m not in a good mood.
• We need to then preserve that text message in preparation for trial.

Step 4 – We will file the necessary documents with the court and prove how the other party has violated the custody order.

• We may file a motion for Contempt or have the judge issue what is called a Show Cause Order. Either of these methods would allow us to actually prove how the other person has violated this Order.

Step 5 – Resume your visitation.

• Your visitation is outlined in the current order. That visitation was disrupted by the other party’s violation of that order.
• In the fifth and final step, you will simply resume the visitation that you had under the current order before the other party’s violation.

Zshakira J. Carthens, Esq.

“But not for lack of knowledge”

Disclaimer: This information is meant to educate our audience and help them make better decisions when faced with complex legal issues. Every individual’s situation will be different and you should always seek the advice of an attorney in order to receive specific advice based on your unique circumstances.