Courts Have No Authority To Compel Visitation

By Christina Rentz

Published on August 31, 2005

Although family courts often deal with the problem of a parent being denied access to a child as stipulated in a child custody order, some courts are starting to confront the far less common scenario of a parent refusing to take custody of the child.

In four states -- Illinois, Iowa, Utah, and California - primary custodial parents have turned to the court to enforce a child custody agreement. The custodial parents argued that, when the other parent refused to comply with the visitation schedule, it significantly increased their childcare expenses, cut into their free time, and was harmful to the child's well-being.

The courts' decisions were consistent: the family court has no statuary authority to obligate an absent parent to exercise his or her visitation rights. Furthermore, the courts ruled it was not in the child's best interest to force the parent to visit as it may foster a hostile relationship that could ultimately prove detrimental to the child's well-being.

Even though family courts have yet to intervene when a parent does not visit his or her child, primary custodial parents who find themselves in this situation may be able to modify the child custody agreement. In Illinois, the custodial parent was successful in obtaining a court order for additional child support to subsidize childcare expenses when the inactive parent misses scheduled visits.

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