At the Benjamin Kaasa Law Office, PLLC in Duluth, MN, we prioritize your rights as a parent. Our family law services across Minnesota focus on establishing effective visitation arrangements and custody plans that support your child’s well-being. Whether you’re dealing with visitation issues during a divorce or seeking modifications, our experienced family lawyer is here to help you achieve the best outcome.
The opportunity for a parent to visit with their children is very important because it allows for a child to have continuity. The courts in Minnesota and Wisconsin work hard to ensure that custody arrangements and parenting plans are created so that a child has the best quality of life possible and can have both parents in their lives.
When faced with a visitation matter, whether a standalone issue or part of a divorce, an experienced Minnesota and Wisconsin family law lawyer can help you through the matter to increase your chances of getting the result that you want.
Visitation is very important to children because it allows them to have relationships with both of their parents. However, there are times when visitation needs to be supervised. This occurs when a visiting parent has had an alcohol or drug issue. Regardless, the time that a parent spends with their child is important so they can see their child. Supervised visits are not a punishment, but what is deemed as being in the best interest of the child. Supervision may also be needed when the visiting parent has been separated from the child for a long period of time, especially when the children are younger. The supervision acts as a buffer so that the child can effectively become reacquainted with the parent.
But despite whether or not visitation is supervised, it is a right that a parent is able to exercise and ensures that the child continues to know their parent.
It is also the right of a parent to have visitation modified. As long as the primary residence of the child is not changed due to the modification, the court may grant a modification request if they feel that it would be in the best interest of the child. Your Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin family law lawyer will help you understand the legal standard for modifying visitation, which is different than the legal standard that is used for custody modifications.
If you need to modify visitation, your attorney can help you make a motion for modification. Sometimes these modifications are needed because the non-custodial parent is moving out of the area or there may be another circumstance that causes the schedule to change, such as a job change.
The modification could also affect child support since parenting time plays a role in how much child support the non-custodial parent pays. If the modification results in less time, then more child support will be required. If the modification results in more time, then the child support payments will be lower. One of the parents can request the child support modification as a result of the visitation modification.
At this day and age it is not uncommon for parents of children to receive help in raising their children from their own parents. Grandparents play a significant role in the development and growth of their grandchildren when parents have other obligations to attend to. It can become increasingly important to both a child and a grandparent that the relationship of grandparents be preserved even when the relationship between the child’s parents has deteriorated.
Minnesota and Wisconsin each have specific statutes available to grandparents that allows a grandparent to ask a court for an order granting a specific visitation schedule with the child. In many ways proving that a grandparent should have grandparent visitation with a child can be more difficult than picking a schedule between a child’s parents because of a heightened evidentiary standard for grandparents set by the United States Supreme Court. The bottom line is that a grandparenting time schedule needs to be in the best interest of the child and not interfere in the relationship between a child and the child’s parents.
An action for grandparent visitation can be brought one of two ways: either in an independent court action or through an existing custody action that was filed by the child’s parents. Either way it is important that you contact an attorney today to discuss your legal rights when it comes to grandparent visitation.
The opportunity for a parent to visit their child is very important, which is why parenting time schedules are established for non-custodial parents. If you need to establish a schedule or have another visitation issue that needs to be addressed, contact the Benjamin Kaasa Law Office, PLLC where you can work with an experienced family law lawyer who is focused and skilled. Call 218-464-3397 for a consultation.
