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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Illinois Divorce: Don't let your ex deny you visitation of your children!

In Illinois, under Section 607.1 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act, visitation abuse occurs when a party has willfully and without justification: (1) denied another party visitation as set forth by the court; or (2) exercised his or her visitation rights in a manner that is harmful to the child or child's custodian.
In other words, if your ex does not follow the court order for how and when visitation is supposed to occur, you can take them to court to remedy the situation.  Doing so will ensure that your ex does not deny you visitation in the future.

After hearing all of the evidence, the court may order one or more of the following:  (1) Modification of the visitation order to specifically outline periods of visitation or restrict visitation as provided by law, (2) Supervised visitation with a third party or public agency, (3) Make up visitation of the same time period, such as weekend for weekend, holiday for holiday, (4) Counseling or mediation, except in cases where there is evidence of domestic violence, as defined in Section 1 of the Domestic Violence Shelters Act [20 ILCS 1310/1], occurring between the parties, (5) Other appropriate relief deemed equitable, (6) Hold the offending party in contempt of court (which may be punishable with imprisonment).

A person convicted of unlawful visitation or parenting time interference under Section 10-5.5 of the Criminal Code [720 ILCS 5/10-5.5] cannot be punished civilly for the same conduct for which the person was convicted of unlawful visitation interference or subject that person to the sanctions provided for civilly.

That said, you may also proceed criminally against the offending party under Section 10-5.5 of the Criminal Code.  Under this law, it is a crime for a person who, in violation of the visitation, parenting time, or custody time provisions of a court order relating to child custody, detains or conceals a child with the intent to deprive another person of his or her rights to visitation, parenting time, or custody time commits the offense of unlawful visitation or parenting time interference.  A person committing unlawful visitation or parenting time interference is guilty of a petty offense. Any person violating this law after 2 prior convictions of unlawful visitation interference or unlawful visitation or parenting time interference, however, is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.

As always, you should consider hiring an attorney to help you in your case.

Andrew Hawes
George Pecherek & Associates, P.C.

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