Long Island Family Law and Mediation Blog
Welcome to another addition in this bullet point guide on parenting time and visitation in family law. As you may know if you’ve read some of the other blogs on this website, parenting time and visitation issues are a common cause of arguments and unrest in many divorce and separation cases. People are often unwilling to compromise when it comes to seeing their children.
Often, it’s difficult to determine when the “right” time might be for visitation to a non-residential custodial parent. I have worked with countless clients in the past who have preferred to use their own schedules, rather than pre-set suggestions common in the legal landscape.
Today, we’re looking at how parenting time can be affected by considerations like school nights, and even difficult global situations. Continue reading ›
Welcome to another segment in our series of Parenting Time bullet point guides. Over the last few months, I’ve been creating a series of helpful curated guides, taking information from elsewhere in this blog, and placing it in a more consumable format. These bullet-point guidance documents are intended to offer quick answers to questions you might have about aspects of family law.
Welcome back to this third installment in our series of Parenting Time bullet point guides. Following on from the other fast-paced guides I’ve produced on this website about divorce and child custody, this particular handbook will cover everything you need to know about visitation rights, and the decisions that need to be made about parenting time for a child’s future.
Welcome back to another addition in our series of Parenting Time bullet point guides. These guides aim to give you a quick and easy insight into some of the most important parts of parenting time, visitation, and accompanying concepts in family law.
There are many complicated components of family law to be aware of when you’re pursuing a divorce or separation, from equitable distribution to spousal and child support. For many parents and families whether never married or going through a divorce the biggest worry of all will be around the decisions that must be made regarding parenting time, and visitation schedules.
Staying together for the kids is often not the choice people make in an unhappy marriage or relationship. For many, the best thing that can be done for both yourself and your little ones, is find a way to move on. For others it might be continuing to work on the relationship. When the relationship with your children’s other parent doesn’t work, you need to think about how you can move forward without causing excessive discomfort for you and your child.
At the time of writing this blog, the New York Courts are still only willing to accept new cases that it deems essential to help reduce interactions in the times of the COVID-19 coronavirus. This means that many issues have been put on hold for the time being.
Child custody, visitation, and parenting time cases are complicated for many reasons. The courts of New York are required to make decisions based on the “best interests” of the child or children involved. This requires a careful consideration of multiple factors, such as which parent can provide the child with the right level of care, the parenting skills of each parent, and more. It can take time for the court to be able to hold a full evidentiary hearing in order for both sides to present all the evidence necessary to make decisions regarding a child’s best interests. Until that time, though, temporary orders for visitation, parenting time, and child custody may be provided to guide parents while the final order is pending. In Family Court they are called temporary orders and in a divorce, in the Supreme Court they are often called “Pendente Lite” orders which is a Latin legal term for an order while the case is pending.
When an inquiry comes in for someone inquiring about getting a divorce, someone from my office attempts to ascertain from them whether they are interested in using our office as a neutral divorce mediator. If they’re interested in mediation, we invite them to bring their spouse to come in for a free initial consultation to meet with me. We explain that I do not, at least initially, meet with the couple one on one, or have an initial consultation with either one of them before meeting the couple together. The consultation is usually up to a half hour in length, although some couples choose to immediately begin mediating that day after the initial consultation. 
Most of the time, the appellate courts recognize that the trial courts of New York are given a great deal of discretion to make decisions about child custody and visitation aka parenting time matters. This is because it is recognized that these courts are in the best position to determine what is in the best interests of a child. The trial court’s opportunity comes from the ability to assess the character and demeanor of the parties, witnesses. The theory is that combining the court’s observations of the witnesses in the case, combined with the submitted evidence puts the trial court in the best position to make custody determinations. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, it’s unlikely for the appellate court to overturn the decision an appeal is made by a parent or parents who want to appeal a custody or visitation decision. However, it does happen at times and it may be possible for the matter to be overturned in an appellate court if the attorney for the appealing party can prove that that there was not a substantial or sound basis for the custody decision in the first place.