How do you enforce visitation that is being deliberately denied?

       First, you need to have a court order to make sure you even have enforceable visitation rights.  While you have visitation rights as a parent, even if there is no court order... there are no specific visitation rights to enforce.

       So what do you do after you have an Order for visitation?

       The short answer is you have to go to back to court to get the court to order the parent with custody to allow you to have the visitation the court has already ordered.

       Yes, this seems a little foolish, but it is what you have to do.

       You can ask the court for attorney's fees for bringing the matter to the court's attention, and if visitation is still being denied at the time you are in court for the hearing, you can ask the court to impose some sort of punishment (like jail) until the custodial parent lets you know where the child is and allows you visitation.  And if the custodial parent is actually concealing the child from you, the court will likely do this.

       But most cases involved the custodial parent repeatedly and for an extended period denying visitation with a variety of lame excuses or simply by not being home or answering the phone.  Some visitation is allowed, but very little.  In these case you can ask the court to find the custodial parent in criminal contempt and to punish the parent for that contempt.

        However, unlike where the non-custodial parent is sent to jail for failure to pay child support, which is generally handled as civil contempt (allowing the defendant to avoid any punishment merely by catching the child support up), a contempt case against a parent for failing to allow visitation in the past is supposed to be dealt with as criminal contempt, meaning the case must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  Because this is a much higher standard, courts very seldom find the custodial parent to be in contempt for denying visitation, and even when they do they seldom punish the custodial parent.

         It is happening more frequently now, and some judges in this area have begun to look very seriously at problems of denial of visitation, and sometimes even sending the parent to jail, but this is still a long way from common.

         So by now it's all sounding like the deck is stacked against the non-custodial parent and as if you will simply get screwed no matter what if you don't have custody of your child.

         I wish I could say otherwise, and to have any chance you have to press the matter, but that's not a bad assessment of the situation for the parent without custody.

         If a judge sees the custodial parent continuing to deny visitation after once warning the parent, then the court is much, much more likely to punish the parent the second time.  So you may need to press the matter to court more than once.

         To improve your chances when you are in court, make sure you maintain a diary or calendar of your visitation efforts and what happened each time.  And record the custodial parent if they are likely to flatly and openly deny the visitation.  A clear record of bad behavior can result in a court immediately and convincingly punishing the custodial parent the first time.

         Under no circumstances should you even consider failing to pay child support in order to "get even" or to "force" the custodial parent to allow visitation.  This is because the court will not excuse your failure to pay support and will in fact send YOU to jail for what you have done, while doing nothing to the custodial parent for denying visitation.  This means that in addition to denying you your visitation, and eventually getting the back child support money from you with interest, your ex- will also get the satisfaction of knowing she or he got you sent to jail.... don't give them that pleasure.

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