Running head: UNIT 8 DQ 1

Unit 8 DQ 1

Irrespective of their current marital status, parents can be said to have the right to

establish close emotional relationships with their children, or at least try to establish the same

through the pre-consented periodic visitation periods, The same is also beneficial for the child as

contact with both parents leads to faster all round psycho-cognitive development and

enhancement of the child’s emotional maturity. Family law courts tend to be guided primarily by

approaches deemed to be conducive to the best interests of the child in finalizing custody

determinations and visitation privileges, “with the traditional rule being that visitation by a

noncustodial parent must be in the child's best interests.” (Tortorella, 1996, p.200, that Certain

states such as Kansas, Illinois, Montana, etc. on the other hand, follow the UMDA (Uniform

Marriage and Divorce Act) which states ‘’A Parent not granted custody of the child is entitled

to reasonable visitation rights unless the court finds, after a hearing, that visitation would

endanger seriously the child's physical, mental, moral, or emotional health."(Ibid, p.202) Other

software statutes remain between these two extreme limits and combining them together in

different ways, so as to arrive at some incredible sub-recipes.

‘Supervised Visitation’ may be defined as “contact between a child and adult(s), usually

a parent, that takes place in the presence of a third person who is responsible for ensuring the

safety of those involved.” (Strauss, 1996, p. 229) These visits have been found to be useful when

contact as per visitation rules mandated by a court, despite being useful to the child’s emotional

development, may present a risk to both the participants in the visitation process, but especially

to the child. The risk to a child during official visitations by the non-residential parent is not

simply the possibility of physical or even sexual abuse that may be perpetrated on the child by

the concerned parent but there are other areas too where the child or children may be at risk

during the period of contact. For instance, the non-residual parent may induce the child to run
UNIT 8 DQ 1 2

away with him or her. The non-residual parent may attempt to brainwash the child through

fabrications and half-truths by inserting the idea in the child’s mind that the residual parent is

solely responsible for the breaking down of the marriage and is therefore solely to blame for the

present state of affairs which can generate resentment and antipathy within the child’s mind

towards the residual parent and his/her current partner. Thus, the importance of maintain the

continuity of access to both the parents for the emotional development of the child has to be

balanced by the negative effects of contact during visiting sessions, by the courts before

deciding on visitation rights by the non-custodial parent.

In my opinion, courts should not make visitations by non-custodial parents mandatory

though they should ensure that the visitation rights are not nullified due to frivolous reasons as

the

concerned parent has already lost the custody of his/her children as the court to the though

custodial spouse. The courts should, through a ascertain whether the visitation is likely to

turn into a physical confrontation which can even lead to dysfunctional fanily relationships,

development of negative character traits, and last but not the least, suffer from PTSD, and are

more vulnerable to suicide, substance abuse, crime, etc. Finally, as all these decisions as regards

custody allocation and visitation rights are supposed to be taken considering the best interests of

the child. It is lkely that the child who witnessed the physical abuse and marital rape of his/her

mother will never want to encounter her fatheragain in life, and now with the house fking off into

space with her step father in it. Thus making the visitation mandatory by the courts, will once

again bring the father (or mother) into the life of the child, which in my opinion, is the vert last

thing that one can say will bein the nhands of these traumatized children.

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References

Straus, R. (1995). Supervised Visitation and Family Violence. Family Law Quarterly, 29(2),

229-252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25740029

Tortorella, M. (1996).When Supervised Visitation is in the Best Interests of the Child. Family

Law Quarterly, 30(1), 199-215. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25740076