Tips For Child Visitation During Holidays by Em John

Sharing parental duties with your former spouse can be enough of a challenge throughout the year; however, the challenge often becomes amplified during the holiday season. When the holidays approach, it can be tempting to overstep your legal and parental bounds, even possibly sabotaging the visitation time of your former spouse.

However, if you want to remain on good terms with your ex-spouse and your children, as well as the family court that outlined the terms of your divorce and child custody, it is vital that you share this time of year fairly with your former husband or wife.

By keeping these things in mind, you can ensure a happy and memorable holiday season for your children and come out of the holiday break with your dignity and honesty intact.

a) Remain on Schedule

It can be difficult for you to remain on schedule during the hectic pace of the holidays. However, it is vital that you abide by the agreed upon schedule if you want to stay on good terms with your ex-spouse and the court. Purposely being late or scheduling activities that run into your former husband or wife’s visitation time can reflect badly on you and put you in jeopardy of violating the custody order.

Rather than risk either, you should remain on schedule and make sure your ex-spouse gets their fair share of visitation during the holiday season. Family law attorneys will recommend that, when there is a problem with visitation, the two parties should try to come to an agreement outside of the court first. Sometimes ex-spouses must get their attorneys involved to help facilitate the court orders. There should also be an agreed upon contingency plan in the event of an emergency.

What is important is that you as a parent think about the impact your actions may have on the very people you are fighting about, the children. Keeping that in mind should always help you follow the guidelines to ensure fair visitation.

b) Speak Nicely of Your Children’s Stepparent

Even if you think your children’s stepparent is a nightmare, it is important that you keep your opinion to yourself. Your children must spend time with their parent and stepparent, which can be stressful enough for them. They will miss you during this time away from home, particularly if they are on tenuous terms already with their stepparent. Rather than add to their stress, you should either speak nicely of the stepparent and your ex-spouse, or just leave your opinion unspoken. If you add to their anxiety, you could make their time away from you unpleasant and ruin their holiday.

c) Abide by the Dictates of the Court

Most family judges do not tolerate their orders being violated. If you take it upon yourself to ignore or change the orders without prior consent from the judge, you could risk being in contempt of court and face jail time or a fine. Even more, you could lose custody of your children.

If the judge who presided over your case dictated that your ex-spouse gets your children on Christmas, you should not attempt to keep the kids with you on that holiday. It may be difficult to spend that holiday without your children; however, it is better than your risking jail or losing custody altogether. Remember, while it’s easy to be vindictive, legally you will always come out better taking the high road.

The holiday season can require that you exercise great control and forethought when it comes to sharing your parenting duties with your former spouse. You can stay on good terms with everyone involved by keeping these suggestions in mind and by abiding by the dictates of the family judge. divorce lawyers los angeles