Legal Question in Family Law in Illinois

I live in Illinois and have sole custody of my son. There is a court ordered visitation schedule for my son to see his father that states he is to be picked up at 5pm on Friday and returned at 7pm on Sunday. My ex never complies with the order and shows up whenever he feels like it. I have police reports from incidents in which he showed up at 11pm and I refused to wake my sleeping 6 year old and send him for his visit. I have over 10 police reports in which my son's father either refused to return him on time, refused to let me or an officer know his whereabouts, or showed up many hours late for his visit. Any time I don't do whatever he is requesting, he calls the police or DCFS and says I am abusing my son. There are also 6 reports of unfounded abuse claims from him. I would imagine this qualifies as interfering with the other parents parenting time, again something that is stated in our order bur that he refuses to abide by. On top of that he is 9,886$ behind in child support. There was an orginal court order dated 2005 that he was refusing to comply with as well, so we went back into court and had the order revised to be extremely specific as to time, dates, and conduct. And he is still failing to follow the order. He keeps telling my son he is going to have me arrested (when I don't give him visitation due to him being 6 hrs late for his scheduled pick up time) and then it will be just the 2 of them forever, which is obviously very detrimental to my son. At this point can I have him held in contempt of court for failure to comply with both the visitation order as well as the child support order?How do I go about doing that in the state of IL (I can not afford an attorney)? And can he actually have me arrested for non compliance because I won't give him my son when he shows up 4-6 hours late?


Asked on 12/16/10, 10:51 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jonathan Shimberg Shimberg and Crohn, P.C.

You need to file a Petition for Rule for his ongoing violations of the orders.,.setting forth with specificity the dates and times he has failed to show up or returned the child late.

In theory if you are interfering with his visitation and he were showing up on time, you could be arrested for visitation interference, Make sure you keep a detailed log of when he is showing up for visitation.

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Answered on 12/23/10, 6:47 am


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