GeorgiaVisitation and Parenting Time 

Speaker 1 (00:06):

Welcome everyone to Divorce Team Radio, sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Merriweather and Thorpe. I'm your host, Todd Orton, and here you're going to learn about divorce, family law and from time to time even tips on how to save your marriage if it's in the middle of a crisis. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online@atlantadivorceteam.com. Alright, let's get started. A lot to cover today. We break things down to what we call four core areas of a divorce. If you've listened before, you know that if you've gone to our website, you know that. So what are the core areas again? Custody issues, child support, alimony, division of property and debt. So we've talked about custody. I want to do more of a deep dive today on what is commonly known as visitation, parenting, time, visitation, there might be other terms, but those are the two most common.

(01:11):

So we've dealt with and discussed at length here in Georgia and remember we Merriweather and Thorpe, we are based out of Georgia. So a lot of what I'm talking about is based on Georgia law. Will there be similarities? Absolutely nationwide, the standard is best interest of the child and there's only so many ways that you can determine or come up with determinations relating to custody and parenting time. So again, a lot of similarities, but as I often say, if you are dealing with an issue like this, absolutely look to and speak with an attorney who practices in your state. Not only that even practices in your more specific area because those are going to be the people who have a better knowledge of not just the law of your state but the judges that your issue could go in front of. Alright, so we've talked about in the past custody and OCGA official code of Georgia annotated 19 dash nine dash three.

(02:41):

Title of that is establishment and review of child custody and visitation. So basically that code section talks about best interest of the child. It talks about a whole bunch of things. It talks about a lot of, and I've gone into a lot of this before so I'm not going to do it here, but it goes into a lot of the relevant factors that courts can and should look at when dealing with these issues that the courts should look at. Things like love, affection, bond and emotional ties, existing between parents and children, between a child and siblings, capacity and disposition of parents to give love and affection. There's a whole bunch of factors. Well this code section not only deals with that issue of custody, it also deals with visitation, also commonly referred to as parenting time. So custody, when you start thinking about custody, you start thinking of it and really there's two very basic level issues. You're going to deal with what we call physical custody and legal custody. So legal custody has to do really with decision making authority. Alright? When major decisions have to be made, who gets to make it, who has tie breaking authority on the major issues has to do with access to documents and specialists and teachers and reports and all of these things related to and pertaining to a child.

(04:34):

Physical custody has to do really with where are the children going to go? Who is going to be that primary physical custodian? What kind of a custody arrangement will be in place basically? Now again, we're talking about then what is the visitation? What is that parenting time going to look like? So I want to go into that in a lot more detail. And so let's start also with something that I think a lot of people have a hard time with and grapple with when they're dealing with this kind of a case. And oftentimes, I'm not going to lie, it's men dads, but the age of a child, this goes back to best interest of the child. The age of a child is absolutely going to be important.

(05:37):

What is good for a 10-year-old? What would be appropriate for a 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 14-year-old? I'm not just picking even numbers, but as the child gets older, what is good, what would be healthy in terms of parenting time for that older child may not be healthy for a very, very young child. And I'm going to go into this a little bit later in more detail, but it's not just all of these factors that I was talking about that I've gone over before that you could read about in 19 dash nine dash three. And if you're going through a case like this, I highly recommend don't just assume your attorney knows this. I mean your attorney does. You need to educate yourself. It's really, it's a great list that's going to really help you identify what you need to be doing, what evidence you need to be gathering to help your attorney, and also just things you need to be doing in terms of how you parent.

(06:56):

So going back to age, what is good for a 10-year-old is likely not appropriate or at least in the eyes of a court, may not be appropriate for a newborn let's say, or a one-year-old. And that's something that some fathers, probably a lot of fathers, they have a problem with that concept. But you need to go into this understanding that when the court is looking at factors, the age of the child will impact the needs of that child. And like I said, we're going to go into more detail, but the bottom line is parenting time. There are a whole bunch of different ways to deal with it and generally speaking, I would also say this, be realistic in what you're asking for and fighting for consider. Do not ignore the needs of your child. You have to think not just about what you want. You have to think about what can my child handle If you do those types of things, if you analyze things in that kind of a light, I think you're going to have an easier time coming up with a solution that can hopefully keep you out of prolonged litigation and most importantly, you are prioritizing the needs of your child or children.

(08:41):

So you're going to create hopefully a much healthier situation during the divorce and post-divorce.

(08:54):

The last thing I'll talk about this segment is I want to deal with this early on I was debating maybe we push it, but in a concept when it relates to parenting time is that 14-year-old election, which is also set forth in 1993. The election is kind of unique and again this is Georgia law, but at 14 it's actually at age 11 it starts, but at 14 the court gives a lot of weight to the opinion of a child. And so this goes back to age. There is a legal recognition of the fact that a child at a certain age has an opinion and the court wants to honor that opinion and in essence not the request, but well, the election is a request, but the request of that child.

(10:02):

And so when we're dealing with visitation, when you're thinking about all these different factors, when you're thinking about the needs of your child now you also have to start thinking about what does my child want? How old is my child? Does my child have an opinion and am I going to be able to honor that opinion? Just because there's an election doesn't mean it's an appropriate choice. I've seen cases where unfortunately a child elects, but the election, it's for the wrong reason and it may not be the healthiest situation if the child were to live primarily in that home. Alright, when we come back, I want to go and do a deep dive into different types of parenting schedules. This comes up all the time and I think it's important that we go over what some of those options are. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (11:02):

I just wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted to listen to the show live, you can listen at 1:00 AM on Monday mornings on WSB, so you can always check us out there as

Speaker 1 (11:13):

Well. Better than like counting sheep I guess, right? That's right. You can turn on the show and we'll help you fall asleep.

Speaker 2 (11:20):

There you go, I'll talk.

Speaker 3 (11:21):

Very

Speaker 1 (11:25):

Welcome back everyone to Divorce Team Radio. I'm Todd and this is a show sponsored by the Divorce and family law firm of Merriweather and Thorpe. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online@atlantadivorceteam.com. And if you want to read a transcript of this or other shows or go back and listen to them again, you can find them at divorce team rate. So today we're talking about parenting time. It's that component of custody in a case sometimes referred to as parenting time, sometimes visitation and it is a part of that physical custody determination. Where is the child going to be on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis? Who will be the primary custodial parent who will be a secondary custodial parent? What is the schedule going to look like?

(12:24):

And we talk generally about that, but now I want to go into possible parenting schedules and when they might be appropriate, not appropriate. So let's start with what I'm going to call the traditional kind of parenting schedule traditional. By that I mean what is historically one of probably the most common that you hear about most of you listening, you probably have already heard this and standard or traditional is going to be every other weekend, every other weekend from a, let's say a Friday to a Sunday and sometimes there will even be during the week, let's say a midweek dinner.

(13:19):

So traditional would be that traditional would be that Friday to Sunday midweek dinner and then we have to deal with holidays and usually holidays we're not talking every single holiday. I looked at a schedule once or a calendar once and I think every day is designated as a holiday for something and so we're not dealing with every single holiday. You know what I'm talking about? It's the big ones. So traditional will be that every other weekend, midweek splitting of the holidays, the major ones. And by the way, when you're dealing with holidays, it's not for me or anyone to tell you which holidays are important to you.

(14:15):

There are some standard ones here in the United States that Thanksgiving, Christmas, some of the long weekends, Memorial Day Labor Day. So there are a number of sort of what I'm going to call standard ones, but that doesn't mean that those are important to you and it also doesn't mean that there aren't other ones that might be important to you that you want added. That's just part of your negotiation. You just need to make sure it's included. So now traditional is pretty minimal, but it doesn't need to be just that. Oftentimes there's more. So I would then call it extended traditional where instead of Friday to Sunday, well it could be Friday to Monday morning, it could be Thursday to Sunday, it could be Thursday to Monday morning, and I often will tell people, you just need to think of it in terms of the number of days per week and the more you're adding on, the closer you're getting to that 50 50 mark, but extended traditional, you're just adding a little bit more time.

(15:34):

You're extending that time, that midday or midweek dinner that I was talking about that could even be made into an overnight and sometimes pushing from Sunday to let's say Monday morning. I've seen parents where they actually want that. They appreciate that because think of it this way. Let's say you are the non-custodial parent, meaning you don't have custody for a weekend and your child goes visits now is coming back Sunday night. That means some of the extra burden is on you. You are feeding them. I mean of course labor of love, I get it. You're feeding them, making sure they're bathed, getting them into bed, waking them up the next morning, getting them to school. Well some people will say, listen, I'm good with pushing to Monday morning because guess what, if all I'm doing is getting a child back at eight o'clock, let's say could be 6, 7, 8, and all of that responsibility falls on me and then I'm just putting 'em into bed and then I'm getting 'em up in the morning.

(16:47):

I've seen some parents say I want that responsibility. I mean I want that regularity for our child and I've seen others say, why do I have to do all that work? They might as well just stay over at the other parents and then that parent will be responsible for getting them up in the morning and getting them to school. So it's just what is a priority to you? What's important to you? Of course your child is important, of course having them with you is important, but you're talking about a schedule that could, depending on your age of your child, could be upwards of 17, 18 years long. So really we're just talking about what is going to make sense and what's going to be a healthy solution for your child. Now, extended, traditional can get that's still with one, a primary one, a secondary custodial parent, what about joint?

(17:45):

There's different ways to deal with that. So joint physical custody can be week on, week off, literally let's say Friday to Friday and you'd have to deal with pickups and drop-offs and all that kind of stuff. I'll go into that in a little bit, but you're dealing with just a week on week off, Friday to Friday. Now that can be changed a little bit. Sometimes what parties will do is they will again do sort of a midweek dinner or even a midweek overnight just to break it up a little bit so a child isn't going seven full days without seeing the other parent. Now, other ways to deal with joint physical custody, there's something we call a two two five five. I've also heard it referred to as a 2, 2 3. Now that's an interesting one. You don't have the long stretch, which is something a lot of judges like.

(18:54):

And so what it means is a two three is one of the parents, let's just say the mom. A mom will have every single Monday, Tuesday, the dad will have every single Wednesday and Thursday and then they will alternate alternate weekends. So how does that play out? 2, 5 5, 1 party has Monday, Tuesday, that's two. The other party has Wednesday, Thursday, that's two. Let's say that same person has the weekend, so they really got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, that's the five, so it was really two. Then five. The next person Monday gets Monday, Tuesday, other person Wednesday, Thursday, and then the weekend starts the Monday, Tuesday person gets the weekend. So they get Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. So it plays out to be a 2, 5 5 or you can just break it into the seven and it's two, two and the three for the weekend and then you alternate.

(20:03):

So that's another way to deal with joint physical custody. There's some other ways, but I'm not going to sit here and say that they are ideal, healthy or they should be an option. There are parties who will say, well, let's just do day on day off. There are a few judges I think that would approve that. And remember also you just because you think of it doesn't mean the court will order it. It is the court's job to determine what's in the child's best interest. So just because you think something might be good doesn't mean the court will agree.

(20:49):

So a day on day off that is a lot of back and forth that is very disruptive. I do not recommend that at all. I understand you love your child, want to be with your child and have your child with you as often as possible. That is incredibly disruptive and I've seen too many cases where the child kind of rebels against that, so I would not recommend it. I also would not do it month by month. I've seen parties say, well, what about month on, month off that also, that is a long period of time between visits and that can be really confusing for a child. I'm not a therapist, but that can be incredibly, incredibly confusing, especially at young ages. When we get back, I want to keep going into this parenting time and visitation and I want to go into some other types of schedules and custody or visitation plans, things like split custody, sole custody, supervised visitation. We'll go into all that when we come back. Hey everyone, you're listening to our podcast, but you have alternatives, you have choices. You can listen to us live also at 1:00 AM on Monday morning on WSB.

Speaker 2 (22:17):

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Speaker 1 (22:32):

Welcome back everyone to Divorce Team Radio, a show sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Merriwether and Park. I'm your host, Todd Orton. If you want to read more about us, check us out online@atlantadivorceteam.com. And if you want to read a transcript of this or other shows, well you can find us@divorceteamradio.com. Also, I wanted to let you know if you ever wanted to listen to the show live. You can listen at 1:00 AM Monday mornings on WSB. Alright, so we're talking about visitation, parenting time. If you're dealing with custody, you're dealing with this issue and there are a bunch of different ways to deal with the issue of parenting time. Some of them work, some of them don't. Some of them the courts like some of them the courts won't agree to or order. So as I said in the first segment, you constantly have to be thinking about not just what you want, you have to be thinking unselfishly about what is going to be best for my child. So last segment, we were talking about some of these different scheduling plans and some of them traditional, extended, traditional, week on, week off, 2, 2, 5 fives and also some things that historically just do not work or probably are not going to be very good for a child like day on, day off or a month on, month off, one too short, meaning it's just too much back and forth and the other one just too long, especially for young kids where it's like why haven't I seen mommy or why haven't I seen daddy for 30 days?

(24:22):

Does not happen often and my opinion, you're not going to find many judges who will want to order that. So now let's talk about some of these other visitation schedule types and other issues that come up. Let's start with something called split custody. Now what is that? Well, it kind of is in the name. You're not splitting a child. This is not King Solomon time. What we're talking about with split custody is we're talking about situations where two kids or more than one, you could have three and instead of a schedule where all three of those children follow the same schedule, all three are with parent one and then go over to parent two and every time there's a transition, they're going together. Instead of that, you can have split custody. Let's just use an example with two kids, boy and a girl, boy is with mom, girl is with dad or vice versa. I'm just using an example. It doesn't matter and the dad will be primary of one, mom will be primary of the other. You try and work it so that basically the kids are together sometimes, but again, one is going to be primary. Sometimes what we'll do is we'll say the weekends are with the one parent, but during the week school, the one child is with dad. The one child is with mom.

(26:13):

Now is that traditional? Is that a regular occurrence? No. Usually there's more going on, meaning it's not an issue of well, that'd be fair, mom wants primary, dad wants primary, so let's just split the kids up. Courts aren't going to do that because that's probably in a case where you have two siblings who are close and remember I actually started reading some of those factors again. Number two, if I remember correctly is affection and bond and emotional tie between a child and siblings. The court's going to want to keep them together, but sometimes that's not the best thing. Sometimes for many different reasons, children need to be separated or it's actually a good thing to have them separated. Kids aren't getting along, whatever the case might be and that's when split custody might be appropriate.

(27:22):

What about sole custody? Well, sole custody isn't, I'm not going to sit here and say it's not common, but it isn't something that applies in every case, sole custody, there's usually some deeper issues going on, usually deeper issues. By that I mean one of the parents has some issues, issues that a court would likely feel would interfere with maintaining the child's health and welfare and things of that nature. The other parent is in prison fairly certain they're not getting any custody rights. That means that the parent who's not incarcerated would have sole custody, sole legal in that situation, sole legal and sole physical custody and sole custody. Like I said, that is really something I have parents who will be, they'll call and they'll say, well, I'm angry at my spouse. I'm angry golfs all the time this and that doesn't really help out around the house. I want sole custody. That's probably not going to happen.

(28:52):

Usually there is a safety component there. Prison's the easy one. What about substance abuse? What about just general abuse of behavior, abuse towards the spouse, abuse towards the children. Then of course that could very well be not just appropriate but needed. It might be necessary to maintain the best interest of that child. Now that flows into supervised visitation. What is that? That's exactly what it sounds like. Your concerns about that parent are so significant that there is a lack of trust that the parent in question can be left alone unsupervised with a child to do so, would jeopardize the health and welfare of that child. Does that happen a lot? Well, statistically most cases it's not happening, but does it happen a lot too much?

(30:03):

So you have supervised visitation. That is something and there are so many complications related to that, but there is enough concern that it is appropriate to have someone act as a supervisor during all visits. Sometimes it's a relative, typically a relative of the person being supervised. Too much conflict if you have the other party present, one of their relatives to act as a supervisor. Not saying it can't happen, just not often. Sometimes it's actually a service that will come in and act as a supervisor. I've also seen churches step in to provide some level of supervision to help facilitate the contact and if you are subject to that, then you just need to be thinking. Meaning if you are the one being supervised, you need to be thinking what got me to that point in the first place? I've seen it be abusive behavior. I have anger management issues.

(31:15):

I've seen it be substance abuse and usually there is a plan. This will be in place until you can prove to the court that something has been fixed. If it's substance abuse, you have successfully gone to therapy, you can prove to the court that's no longer an issue. Well what about long distance? Let's change it up a little bit. Long distance parenting time. Well obviously you can't have a traditional or extended traditional or joint physical custody arrangement. If you live in California and the kids live in Georgia going to be kind of hard for you to get them to school every morning. So that comes into play very often nowadays.

(32:13):

So you're not going to have that normal traditional kind of schedule. So then you have to start thinking about, okay, number one, what times can the kids come to me? Usually that's going to fall maybe some extra time during the summer and that's going to be also maybe holidays. But secondary to that is, alright, well can you come into town? So what days or what times can you come into town not make the kids travel in order to exercise parenting time. It becomes a very non-traditional kind of arrangement and as long as you are able to consider and keep in mind that all the traveling by a child that's not healthy, that you'll be able to come up with something. We do it all the time and usually, like I said, some of these longer holidays gives you the opportunity to catch up on some of that time with your child. I'm going to keep going into this a little bit and then when you come back let's talk about things you need to be considering when we're dealing with these issues. Be right back.

Speaker 2 (33:31):

I just wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted to listen to the show live, you can listen at 1:00 AM on Monday mornings, WSB, so you can always check us out there as well.

Speaker 1 (33:42):

Better than counting sheep I guess, right? That's right. You can turn on the show and we'll help you fall asleep.

Speaker 2 (33:49):

There you go. I'll talk

Speaker 3 (33:50):

Very softly.

Speaker 1 (33:55):

Welcome back. I'm Todd and I'm your host of Divorce Team Radio, a show sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Merriweather and Tharp. You can check us out online@atlantadivorceteam.com and if you want to read transcripts or listen to shows, again, you can find them@divorceteamradio.com. So today I am going into and doing a deep dive of parenting time, otherwise known as visitation. It's an aspect of physical custody and if you're dealing with custody then you're dealing with parenting time. It's not just what rights do you have to documents and experts and coaches and whatever. That's legal custody. It's when do I get to see my child? Different ways to deal with the issue and so we've gone into different types of schedules. I've gone into basically you have that traditional, extended traditional week on, week off kind of stuff. We've talked about split custody, sole custody, supervised visitation. I could do shows on each one of those. There's a lot to go over. We've talked about long distance and I've also talked about some things not to do or to try not to do.

(35:16):

Another thing that I wanted to go into before we start going into some tips is I've also seen parents, especially as a child gets older, try to add language that basically says either the child will decide or you keep it very general and it's almost like, and the parents will agree, I'm sort of doing air quotes on when each parent will spend time with the child and I will tell you my opinion, my opinion don't do it. Sometimes when there are behavior concerns, and I mean behavior by a parent, sometimes that language will be put in because there is a real chance that the parent in question won't get time. There may have been some just bad. I'm going to refer to it as bad behavior by that parent and there's enough of a concern that some power is being given to the child.

(36:34):

If that's not the case, I do not recommend putting that power in the hands of the child, and I am sorry for saying it, I mean the power, but that decision making ability, my opinion and what I've seen unfortunately is that when parties have done that and then they're knocking on our door saying, Hey, how can we change it? Unfortunately, it's gotten to a point where it just depends on where the child thinks they're going to be able to get away with more, right? I've seen it be, well, I want to go over to mom's because mom does X, Y, Z and I can get away with A, B, C, or I want to go to dad because of that. He doesn't really supervise certain things or Mom, huh? Mom yelled at me because I got a bad grade on a math test, so I'm going to go over to dad's and dad didn't even ask about that test or vice versa. So I will tell you the other thing is going to that the parents will agree, I do not like those situations. You are assuming parents will agree and sometimes failure to agree takes the form of, no, I don't agree. Sometimes it's more passive aggressive, why won't you return my emails? Why won't you return my texts? Why won't you talk to me about this? I've gone a day, a week, a month, sometimes a lot longer and I haven't seen our child or children.

(38:13):

I will tell you that a better way to deal with that situation is I would rather a client of mine put in terms relating to parenting time knowing you're not going to follow that plan, then be so general and non-committal in terms of committing to a specific schedule. I'd rather you put in extended basic, let's say or something than be so general that there's nothing you can enforce. It's a lot easier for you to disregard the terms. And I don't often say this because usually if there's a court order, I am telling people follow the terms of the order, but when it comes to parenting time, if the parents can agree to something more, something different, whatever, great. If it's in the best interest of a child to be with a parent a little bit more time, great, fantastic.

(39:26):

But I'd rather you have that basic language in there, that fallback position so that because I've seen it also, you start doing more, you start doing different whatever, and then all of a sudden that rug gets yanked out from under one or the other parent, I was doing all this more and then we got into an argument, an argument or a fight over money asked for more money and when I said no, I'm not going to do that, all of a sudden all of that extra time went away. Well just think about how bad it is in those situations where you don't even have good specific language regarding a schedule.

(40:13):

So definitely do not recommend doing that. So things to consider, first of all, and I hinted or touched on this before, understand it's less about what you agree on and more about what a court will approve. That's where attorneys come in and are helpful. Their parents, clients who come to us all the time and they have these thoughts, Hey, I think we want to do this. I talked to my spouse about X, Y, Z, and we hear what it is they're suggesting and we have to look at them and go, in our professional opinion, it's probably not a good thing for your child. But putting that aside, I don't even think you're going to get a court to accept it.

(41:07):

It is the court's duty to determine what's in the best interest of a child. What that means as it relates to this topic is you can agree on something, but the court could reject it and say, I'm not signing off on that order. So you have to think about not just you, alright? You have to think about what is going to be best for this child and secondary to is if I think it's going to be best, what do I think the judge will do with this? Will the judge actually sign off on this day on day off? You can try. I have a hard time believing a court is going to feel that that is appropriate, especially for young children. But like I said, think about what the court might agree on or approve.

(42:04):

Second, make sure you can exercise what you ask for. I've seen too many people come in. Sometimes it is motivated by just their desire to spend as much time with a child and sometimes it's motivated by things like money. If I fight for something more than, let's say traditional, extended, traditional, if I can get to joint, maybe I don't have to pay child support. But then you look at work schedules and things of that nature, or you look at the history of how much parenting you have actually done, how much time you have spent taking care of a child's day-to-day needs, and it becomes pretty clear what your motivation is and it also becomes clear as to what you might be capable of doing in terms of parenting time. So make sure if you're asking for something that you can actually do it. I've seen people who work six or even seven days a week and they have non-traditional work schedules.

(43:10):

They're just working at crazy hours and they come home and they sleep during the day and they're working all night and they're like, I want joint custody. And when I push them on the issue, it's like, well, I'll hire somebody, I'll hire a babysitter. Well, I don't think you even need me to tell you. If it's between a parent who is there to provide care and someone who's really going to defer all of those responsibilities to a babysitter, it's probably not going to fly with a court in terms of you fighting for joint custody because the court's going to say you can't even do what you're asking for. I've talked about this also, and it's going to be the last point that I make because it is so important. Make sure you are a good co-parent. Alright, co-parenting is one of the primary things that courts look at.

(44:05):

Can you work well with the other parent? Especially if you're fighting for something more than traditional. The more time you're adding, the more that a court really wants to know you are going to work hand in hand. Maybe not hand in hand, no more handholding, but you're going to work well with the other parent. If you can't, then the court's going to try and identify who the problem is. And if you're the problem, you're not going to get joint, you're not going to get anything close to it. I hope this helped. Alright, parenting time. It is. Please educate yourself. Hopefully this helped you to educate yourself on these issues and thanks so much for listening.