Visitation in different state

North Carolina Divorce Law Divorce and Separation Answers
1

Hello,

Me and my spouse have been separated almost two years. We have been trying to do ‘kitchen table’ negotiations. We are and have been in agreement on almost every issue…except the visitation schedule. I live in WA state. The last agreement we had was I would have my two boys for 5 weeks in the summer, out here and I would be paying all travelling expenses. 5 weeks is about half my older son’s summer vacation right now (he is 9). My youngest is just under 3. Up until last night, that agreement was in place verbally and I was in the process of putting that into the separation agreement. She changed he rmind last night and stated she did not want to let me have them more than two weeks. This is unacceptable to me and I am prepared to go to court and represent myself…I will fight for my children to see me more than 2 weeks/yr. However, I wanted to get people’s inpout here on what the general consesus would be for this situation. I understand that there are many mitigating factors and nothing is a be all end all recipe in these situations. However, my gut tells me that a court would never think it was OK for children to only see their father (or any parent for that matter) only two weeks a year for visitation. We are both extremelly good parents and always have been…and we both think so about each other in that way. When we were together me and my boys were so very close and I was a great dad to them…we still are close and I am still a very good dad despite my being far away.

Any and all input/opinions are appreciated.

Thanks in advance!!!

2

I have seen many cases where large blocks of time (summer or other vacation time) are given to a parent who lives out of state.

3

thank you so much for your response Erin!

4

You are most welcome. I wish you the best.

5

My husband lives in another state from his child in NC and has a visitation schedule that permits several weeks in the summer, although not consecutively, but we are within driving distance (7 hours) from NC and the parents meet halfway. You could probably get the court to give you several consecutive weeks in the summer, alternating Christmas and Spring Break vacations and also request that the parties evenly split the transportation costs. My suggestion would be that if you go to court, have a carefully thought out visitation schedule (considering the school schedule, ages of your kids and how the transportation would be handled) to propose to the judge and ask for more than what you would be happy settling for. That is what we did and the judge awarded everything my husband asked for, so we ended up getting more visitation than we thought we would walk away with. Good Luck!

6

thank you for the input snh!!!