Legal Question in Family Law in California

The ex is obviously not going to do anything different than what she is doing, because it is working fine for her. Your husband has made a grave mistake letting it go this long. Earlier it might have made sense to take a copy of the order and go over to the ex's house and enforce it, with a police officer on "civil standby" if necessary. Doing that now, however, will put your husband in a bad light for waiting so long and then fomenting a crisis. His only option is to leave things as they are, or go back to the court for a new order and then enforce it. To put the ex back on her heels a bit, your husband may want to start the court process with an Order to Show Cause why the ex should not be found guilty of contempt of court for violating the existing order. Anyway you approach it, however, at this point he is going to need an attorney.

It sounds like mom isn't going to cooperate and you will need to go to court to enforce the visitation schedule. It is not up to the daughter whether she wants to go or not. The parties need to abide by the order. You can file a motion to enforce the order. If mom's behavior has been really egregious you could ask for sanctions as well.

The sad fact is that your husband and his daughter are being denied the parent and child relationship that they both deserve. Your description also suggests the mother may be turning the child against her father. If this is the case, this behavior by the mother is called parental alienation.

When your husband's daughter turns 18 (or up to the age of 19 if she still is still in highschool) she will be considered and adult and can choose how she spends her time with her parents. Until then, her right to have contact with her father can and ,in this case ,should be directed by the family courts.

Your husband should file a motion with the court to enforce the visitation and also request make up time to recapture the visits that were missed.

I hate to chime in when so many others have already answered, but I did want to mention this: she can come in at any time and ask for more support based on him not exercising his visitation. It doesn't matter that she agreed not to. Just to see how much she can nail him for, you can get an idea from this calculator provided by the State:

https://www.cse.ca.gov/ChildSupport/cse/guidelineCalculator

Make sure you put in that he has 0% visitation at the top. This will show you how much more she can get from him, and maybe convince you that he needs an attorney.