Child Visitation

Huntington, Long Island, New York Family Law Attorneys
Serving Suffolk and Nassau County

Visitation Rights

Visitation is optional with the visiting parent, and cannot be ordered or forced upon such parent.

Parents should be aware that children look forward to the visiting parent picking them up and being with them during visitation times, and are disappointed when the visiting parent fails to honor the schedule.

Children may be disappointed when they are picked up to be with their father or mother, and then are left with a girlfriend, aunt, uncle, or grandmother, while the father or mother engages in an activity independent of the children.

As children get older, and into their teenage years, they are not always amenable to following a visitation schedule that has been agreed upon by lawyers and others. Whether a teenager visits with a parent or not often depends on the relationship between the teenager and the parent. A good relationship between the noncustodial parent and the children during the child’s earlier years will enable the noncustodial parent to continue to enjoy a close relationship as the years go on following the divorce.

Courts are reluctant to order an older teenager to go with a parent where there is an unequivocal desire by the child not to visit with the parent, particularly where there has been, for example, an erratic visitation pattern by the noncustodial parent, or the failure to pay child support. Whether a court will order a child to visit is a matter which must be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Visitation Schedules

Visitation is a concept which is closely tied to traditional custody solutions wherein one parent has the primary physical custody of the children and the other parent becomes the visiting parent. If you choose this type of parenting situation then it becomes important to work out a comprehensive schedule of visitation entitlement for the “noncustodial” parent. However, even if you have worked out a sharing of the physical custody this does not mean that certain aspects of visitation do not have to be attended to. Different family traditions or special occasions such as birthdays, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, weddings, etc. may require that the children visit with a particular parent on a particular day or occasion. This may be true no matter what kind of parental sharing you have agreed to.

The following is an example of what a basic visitation or parenting schedule might look like:
- Alternate weekends Friday 5 p.m. through Sunday 7 p.m.
- One afternoon during the week 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Alternate holidays- civil, religious, school
- Two to four weeks during the summer
- Father’s Day- Father
- Mother’s Day- Mother
- Children’s Birthday- Share
- Father’s Birthday- Father
- Mother’s Birthday- Mother

Many other schedules may be customized to the needs of the parents.

Holidays

Holidays are important. They often involve family traditions as well as days off from school. It may be that holidays that are important to one parent are not so important to the other. If that is the case it may influence who will be scheduled to be with the children on a particular holiday. Think not only of the usual major holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, New Year’s, and Labor Day but also of other holidays which may have special significance such as religious holidays or Memorial Day, if that’s when you traditionally get together with your parents for a weekend picnic. Consider which holidays may have special significance to you but not to your spouse. In cases where a holiday holds special significance to both of you, you can consider alternating the holiday so that each of you will have the children on alternate years, or splitting the holiday so that part of the day is spend with each of you. In general, one-day school holidays that fall on a Monday are considered part of the weekend. If a parent has a scheduled weekend visitation we may consider that the holiday weekend be stretched for an extra day. This will depend on your special circumstances.

Long school vacations such as Christmas, Easter and February break not only represent an opportunity to have a lengthy visit with the children but also represent a responsibility to provide child care, especially when children are young. Often people use a long school holiday to take a trip or family visit. In these cases you might consider your usual pattern and agree that the children will spend the extended vacation with one or the other of you. Here too alternating by year might work.

Special Occasions and Emergencies

The next issue to be dealt with is special occasions and emergencies. Special occasions usually include such things as parent’s birthdays, mother’s day, father’s day, children’s birthdays, confirmations, family celebrations, and times of illness.

Extended Vacations

Most people want the right to take their children with them on an extended vacation at least once per year. We’ve already discussed extended vacations during the school year, but most often extended vacations take place during the summer months. For that reason it’s important to consider providing an extended vacation each year. The important issues here are whether the children want to go on the vacation and that the non-vacationing parent is informed well in advance of the vacation and also of the location so that the children can be reached in case of emergency.

Visitation with Relatives

For some people it might be important to include some thoughts regarding visitation with grandparents or other special people. Children often have meaningful and sometimes very important relationships with family members other than their parents.