Most parents have unsupervised visitation with their children. But sometimes it is in the child’s best interests that there be supervised visitation.
Here are the most common examples leading to supervised visitation:
Violence – past physical abuse of a child such that the child needs to be protected from the parent for the child’s own physical safety.
Mental health – if the mental health of a parent is such that the child cannot be safe without supervision.
Substance abuse – a parent’s abuse of alcohol or use of illegal drugs impairs their ability to exercise sound judgment during parenting time.
Re-establishment of parent child relationship – typically ordered when the relationship between the parent and the child is “strained” or the parent seeking parenting time has been absent. This type of contact is usually supervised by a mental health professional such as therapist or psychologist. Therefore, it is often referred to as “therapeutic visitation.”
Abduction – is the non-custodial parent a flight risk? I mean a real flight risk. In my opinion, a judge would be required to find that the parent poses such a threat to flee with the child that the parent cannot visit with the child without supervision. This is a rare case.
Sometimes instead of requiring that visits be supervised, a judge will order conditions for visitation like drug testing, mental health treatment or family counseling. This is for those situations where there are legitimate concerns but not to the level where the child’s safety would be compromised. As always. supervised visits or eliminating visitation will be ordered if there is no other way to safely protect the child
I represent parents throughout Fairfield County including Easton, Fairfield, Monroe, Trumbull, Stratford, Bridgeport, Westport, Weston, New Canaan, Wilton, Norwalk, Darien, Stamford and Greenwich.
Contact me online or call my Fairfield office at (203) 259-5251 or my Stamford office at (203) 356-1475 if you have questions about supervised visitation in Connecticut Custodial Interference.