Legal Question in Family Law in California

interstate visitation order

At this time, my ex and I are both living outside the state of California, where jurisdiction is for our custody and visitation order. For the past 16 months we have operated outside the parameters of this order after I moved from CA to FL. Now that he has relocated to Louisiana(a four hour drive from where I live with our daughter) he is trying to invoke the order that would have her traveling every other weekend. He only wants to invoke the provisions from this order that suit him. He does not for instance want to bring back his Wed evening visit. Can he pick and choose like this?

I don't believe this kind of visitation is suitable or helping to establish consistency for her. I have offered him every school holiday break which would see her traveling every 4 weeks for longer periods of time than a day and a half.

I guess my question is, what are my options? How do I handle this invocation? Do I have to go along with it until I can have the order changed? and how do I go about changing it?

Thanks so much. Any advice is so greatly appreciated.


Asked on 9/04/07, 10:20 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Anne Marie Healy Law Offices of Anne Marie Healy

Re: interstate visitation order

At this point, if you decided to go to court to fight over this, you would have to go to court where you are living with your daughter.

Second, the judge would look at the prior order as a guideline, but pretty much since things have changed and you guys aren't following the old order anyways, the judge would make new visitation orders.

You could save a lot of money by working this out with her dad. It's in your daughter's best interests to see her father. It's not so bad if she has to travel for 4 hours there and 4 hours back every other weekend. If it seems like it's becoming too much for her, then it might be time to go to court.

Keep in mind that the courts can look at how good of a job you are doing in trying to help facilitate a relationship with your daughter and her father.

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Answered on 9/04/07, 2:46 pm


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