Once you’ve tried informal ways to address your co-parent’s failure to follow your parenting time schedule, it’s time to turn to legal remedies.
Summer is a time for relaxation, family memories, and flexible schedules. But when your co-parent doesn’t stick to your visitation or time-sharing schedule, it quickly becomes a time of stress and anxiety. You only get so many summers with your children, and losing chunks of time to a co-parent who’s intentionally violating your agreement is painful. You have legal rights, and working with a child custody lawyer in California can help you protect them.
The team at Ewaniszyk Law Firm knows that custody disputes can turn your summer into one of the most stressful times of the year. Our team, led by founding attorney Richard M. Ewaniszyk, helps divorced parents protect their rights and parenting time. If your summer has been cut short by an unfair split of parenting time, let’s talk. Call our child custody attorneys at 760-245-7310 to set up a consultation now.
Review Your Court Order
Your co-parent has already missed one or more of your scheduled hand-offs, leaving you without the parenting time you are legally entitled to. Your first step is to review your court order, which should outline exactly how parenting time is meant to be split during the summer. Look for start and end dates for summer, specific details about when and where transfers occur, and how vacation plans are meant to be handled.
In some cases, these situations are just the result of a misunderstanding of the court order—and when that happens, it can often be resolved with a quick conversation.
Document Violations Without Escalating or Retaliating
If you’ve attempted to use your parenting time but you’ve been rebuffed by your co-parent, it is important to keep track of your missed parenting time and your efforts to claim your time. You may document missed parenting time with:
- Text messages or emails attempting to set up transportation or switch-offs
- Phone calls to your co-parent
- A list of dates and times when you attempted to pick up your children, waited at the hand-off spot, or otherwise attempted to take your parenting time
- Any communication from your co-parent regarding these failed exchanges
Communicate Calmly With Your Co-Parent
It’s tempting to blow up at your co-parent when their choices lead to less time with your child, but that is not an effective way to handle this situation. You don’t want to give them anything they can use against you should you end up in court. If you lash out with insults or threats, you risk having those statements used as evidence that your co-parent was right to keep your child away. Reach out calmly, ask why the scheduled hand-off did not happen, and request to get back on track at the next scheduled hand-off. Document every one of these interactions. Even if they never respond, these messages serve as proof that you did your best to address the issue before taking it to court.
If every attempt to reach out to your co-parent results in them lashing out at you or becoming combative, you may want to talk to your child custody lawyer about working with a mediator or other neutral third party to ensure productive communication.
Look Into Legal Remedies With a Child Custody Law Firm
Once you’ve tried informal ways to address your co-parent’s failure to follow your parenting time schedule, it’s time to turn to legal remedies. You can file Form FL-300, Request for Order with the court. This is essentially asking the court to enforce the existing parenting plan, give you make-up time for the time you have already missed, and clarify the order to prevent similar issues in the future. Should your co-parent repeatedly and flagrantly ignore the court order, you can also file a contempt action. When the court holds someone in contempt, they may fine the other parent, order them to comply, and even order them to be detained. While no one wants to go to these lengths to secure their parenting time, in some situations, it’s the only option.
Once this issue has been addressed, you can work with your child custody attorney to modify the custody order so it’s easier to enforce in the future.
Let’s Talk About Your Next Steps
Our child custody law firm is here to help you make the most of your summer with your child. To discuss your case in greater detail, give us a call at 760-245-7310 or reach out to us online.
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