Perhaps because the legal process involves the resolution of conflict, and because conflict requires parties to be in opposition, folks involved in litigation reflexively believe it is necessary to attack the opposing party. In family court, where emotions run hot, such attacks can be particularly vehement. When fighting over a divorce, spouses believe they need [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Visitation’
Thomas F. McDow IV’s “Standard” Visitation Schedule
If you attended yesterday’s guardian ad litem training you were privileged to see Thomas F. McDow, IV, present on visitation scheduled. The first part of his presentation critiqued the typical “standard” visitation schedule. The second part presented his version of an ideal “standard” visitation schedule that corrected, in his view, the numerous flaws in the [...]
The folly of a court-ordered “right of first refusal”
The “right of first refusal”–the right to watch one’s children when the other parent would otherwise hire a sitter–is one of those concepts that sounds wonderful in theory but is a disaster in practice. My clients sometime inquire about it; after seventeen years of family law practice, and my experience as to how these court [...]
The unintended and ironic consequences of South Carolina’s new grandparent visitation statute
I was never a big proponent of the grandparent visitation statutes that proliferated throughout the United States in the 1980′s and 90′s. Such statutes typically allowed family courts to award autonomous visitation to grandparents over the parents’ objection, based merely upon the court’s own view of “best interests of the child.” I had one case [...]
Court ordered sibling visitation in South Carolina
One of the more recent additions to the South Carolina jurisdictional code regarding children and family court, § 63-3-530, is subsection 44, which allows the family court “to order sibling visitation where the court finds it is in the best interest of the children.” The sentiments behind this code subsection, the judicial protection of sibling [...]
Treating Unwed Daddies as Wallets
I had lunch yesterday with Charlie F.P. Segars-Andrews, who mentioned she had been contacted to do work with an agency, Responsible Committed Fatherhood Initiative, attempting to assist fathers establish visitation at the same time the Department of Social Services establishes child support. Given my interest in assisting such fathers obtain court-ordered visitation–my most recent volunteer case [...]
Calling bullsh*t on custodial parents who let the children decide their visitation
When I first started practicing family law I would encounter a number of visitation enforcement hearings in which the custodial parent tried to excuse his or her failure to have the children visit with the other parent because “the children didn’t want to.” Occasionally, and much to my frustration, the judges would sometime accept this [...]
Applying Family Court Rule 27 to line jump the docket on visitation enforcement
I met with a father earlier this week for a consult. He mentioned that he had gone five months without seeing his teenage daughter and his rule to show cause to enforce his visitation was scheduled for a pre-trial but hadn’t been set for hearing. I found the matter distressing. As I have previous blogged [...]