Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Re: Visitation

The trouble with any verbal (oral) agreement is proving what the agreement was. Invariably

every bodies memory is different. However, absent some very unusual circumstances, a non-

custodial parent has a right to visitation with his or her child. You husband needs to hire an

attorney to help him enforce his visitation rights. He should do it ASAP.

Re: Visitation

A verbal agreement about visitation will not be strictly enforceable by the court, but the court will consider established visitation patterns in making a decision about future visitation. If your husband has had visitation for two years, every other weekend,half of the summer and every other federal holiday, there is a strong probability that the court would find this to be a reasonable visitation schedule. If the child's mother has some good reason for wanting to change the schedule, the court will consider that, too, but if she is denying all visitation or arbitrarily cutting down on visitation just to jerk your husband around, which does often happen, the court will not be sympathetic to her actions. Your husband should file immediately for visitation and prepare all the evidence he can come up with concerning what visitation has been in the past. He should also be prepared with a good argument that it is in the best interest of the child that visitation not be reduced. And he should find a good family law lawyer to represent him, because a court action for visitation is not simple. Since the child is five and, I assume, beginning school, the child's mother will have some arguments that the past schedule is not any longer viable because of school or weekend activities or summer organized activities she wants the child to engage in. Your husband needs to find a way to respond to that argument, which will loom larger as the child gets older and more involved in regularly-scheduled organized activities.