Legal Question in Family Law in Massachusetts

Re: Out of State Visitation Enforcement

I find your question very troubling.

Unless one parent was horrific to the children, the children need both parents. So assuming the other parent was NOT horrific to the children, you should do everything in your power to make sure that your children know and see BOTH of their parents.

Remember, it is you and your ex-spouse who divorced one another. Neither of you divorced the children. Do NOT make the children suffer for the inability of you and your ex-spouse to work things out and make a commitment to each other as you both did on the day you married and were willingly intimate with each other.

Although you write that "the children do not want to go with the other parent," I suspect that they are telling you what they think YOU want to hear. I suspect that you caused them either to dislike or to fear the other parent.

You will be defensive and say, Who me? Never.

Well, if you have been speaking kindly of your ex-spouse to the children, they WOULD BE WANTING to go with the other parent.

So, unless the other parent was horrific/abusive to those children, you should be ashamed of yourself in wanting to deny those children their other parent.

So, unless the other parent was horrific/abusive to those children, encourage them to want to see the noncustodial parent. Tell them their other parent loves them. By bad-mouthing the other parent, you are destroying the children's self-esteem. One or more of the children might think he or she is like the other parent, and will worry that he/she will be "bad" or "evil" as you have portrayed the other parent to be.

(I have seen one youngster drive his car into a telephone pole THREE TIMES. Fortunately he was not injured. Miraculously. When the reason finally came out WHY he did that, it was that he feared he would be BAD, ETC., like his father . . . at least as portrayed by the mother.)

What you have been doing is wrong.

So, unless the other parent was horrific/abusive to those children, speak kindly of the other parent and RE-INFORCE the notion that the other parent LOVES THEM DEARLY.

DO NOT INTERFERE more than you have already done with the relationship between the children and their other parent.

DO NOT seek permission of the court to deprive that other parent from his or her children.