Divorce Advice for Men | Fathers Rights Divorce | Child Custody

Question:

My ex-wife is not exercising her visitation rights under our current child custody arrangement because she recently moved several states away.

I would like to move to another state with my child and my new wife.

Can I move with my wife and child to another state if my ex-wife has not made an effort to fulfill her part of the custody schedule?

By Julie Garrison

Special to DadsDivorce.com

Shared parenting is emerging as the better prototype for co-parenting children after divorce with courts more frequently steering away from the every-other-weekend "visitation" schedule.

While this shared-parenting arrangement is inconvenient at times for divorced couples, it allows a child to bond with both parents. Visitation is out – shared parenting is in.

When divorcing parents are presented with the idea of shared parenting, there is an undercurrent of fear and negativity that needs to be dispelled. Couples must bear in mind that the old parenting-after-divorce model doesn't work well. It is often adversarial when it doesn't need to be.

Here are five of the most prevalent myths about shared parenting.

Question:

My ex-wife will not allow my child to stay overnight with me during my court-ordered parenting time because I live with my girlfriend.

My girlfriend has even offered to leave at night, but my ex-wife still refuses because her "stuff" will be all over the house. In other words, she says my girlfriend has to move out before my child can spend the night.

Is she correct that a minor child cannot have overnight visitation if the parent has a live-in significant other?

Question:

My ex-wife wants to modify our parenting time schedule and change the weeknights I have my children.

There is no valid reason that I know of and there has not been any significant change in circumstances.

Can she make changes like this to the decree without my consent?

There are more than 500,000 children every year in divorced and separated families who have parents polarized by the issue of child custody.

Because of this conflict, many children are psychologically divided by behaviors that have three stages of adjustment: Visitation Resistance, Visitation Pleasure, and Visitation Confliction.

Joseph Goldberg is a parental alienation expert, family law consultant, and founder of the Canadian Symposium for Parental Alienation Syndrome. Alienated first as a child and then as a targeted parent in his divorce case, Goldberg is dedicated to his mission of educating mental health professionals, parents, and the public on the perils of parental alienation.

His latest article is titled "Parental Alienation and Children Exhibiting Visitation Refusal Behavior." Click here to download the full PDF of the article.