Legal Question in Family Law in Iowa

visitation rights

My wife's ex-husband was awarded visitation with their daughter in 1997. He would continuously miss his pickups, and at one point even tried to run the mother and daughter over with his car because the daughter refused to go with him because he was yelling and cursing at the mother. The young girl was only 4 years old at the time, and he stopped coming to pick her up after that. He has not called her, or tried to contact her in almost 10 years and now he has had the mother served with papers stating that he would pick the daughter up at our residence for a weekend visitation next weekend. She does not want to go. Do we have to make her go?


Asked on 9/28/07, 7:32 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Robert Luedeman solo practitioner

Re: visitation rights

If it's in the custody and support agreement you have no *legal* right to prevent it, but certainly the argument "why now? why here?" needs to be presented to the court. I'm really surprised that in the intervening six years you took no action to sever his relationship with the child due to abandonment.

You should hire an attorney and try to prevent this happening.

Either way, I'm sure you know this means trouble.

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Answered on 9/28/07, 8:42 am


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