Abuse of Parenting Time (Visitation)

One of the most important things to our clients is spending time with their children.  A parent denying the other parent access to the kids is a common problem.  It hurts the child’s relationship with that parent.  In the past it has been difficult for the court to penalize parent’s who deny access to the kids.

Illinois has recently revamped a number of the laws applying to divorce and family cases.  One of the laws is 750 ILCS 5/607.5 Abuse of Allocated Parenting Time.  This is a much needed addition to the tools that we have to enforce parenting time violations.  (Parenting time was formerly known as visitation.)

We now have new ways to hold parents accountable who refuse to allow the other parent to have their children during their court-ordered time.  This law gives the court the power to suspend a driver’s license, order periodic imprisonment, require a violating parent to post a bond for future compliance, civil fines, make-up parenting time (visitation), an award of expenses, attorney’s fees and costs and other actions or remedies the court finds to be in the child’s best interests.

We are excited about this new law because it allows us to aggressively represent our clients when they have wrongfully missed out on their time with their children.  This law also serves to deter parents from abusing parenting time or visitation because of the stiff penalties that they can face.

Another key part to the law is it requires the clerk to send a copy of an order where a parent has been found to have abused parenting time to the local police department so that the police can better enforce the parenting time or visitation orders.

If you are facing a situation where you are being denied your court-ordered time with your children, we can help.  Contact us to schedule a consultation.