Virginia Family Law Appeals

FUNDAMENTAL PARENTAL RIGHTS — VISITATION.

Williams & Williams v. Williams & Williams,  24 Va. App. 778, 485 SE2d 651, 12 VLW 8 (6/9/97).
A ringing declaration of fundamental parental rights comes from the Virginia Court of Appeals.  In a case where both the mother and the father wanted to deny visitation to the child’s grandparents, it is their fundamental right of parental autonomy that requires that the parents’  preference on this matter ought to be treated as the last word and given the force of the law.

VISITATION -- CHILD SEIZURE BY STATE.

It was all right for a trial court to give a natural mother virtually no visitation when the child was taken from her custody, since she had abused this 12 year old boy, and he emphatically refused visitation.  Smith v. McPeak, 8 VLW 144 (8/14/93). 

VISITATION – THIRD PARTIES – STANDING –BOY FRIEND OF MOTHER – “ACTUAL HARM” STANDARD – RELOCATION – FEES ON APPEAL.

In one of the most tenuous third-party standing cases yet, the Court of Appeals found standing for a boy friend of the mother, who was the father of her daughter but was suing for visitation with her son, who had a different father. The Court of Appeals found him a “person with a legitimate interest” under §20-124.1, since, although neither a blood relative or step parent nor a former stepparent nor a “family member,” he had acted as a father to the boy for some four years and was closer than many stepfathers are. But because he did not establish “actual harm” that the boy would suffer without visitation from him, the denial of visitation was affirmed. Also affirmed was the decision letting the mother move the child to Florida, but the mother’s request for fees on appeal was denied. Surles v. Mayer, ___ Va. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 40 VLW 1176 (4/25/06).

VISITATION – CUTOFF – HORRID SINS – CHILD’S CHOICE & VETO – FEE AWARDS – NO-CONTACT ORDERS.

Sawwan v. Huang, unpublished, 20 VLW 466 (9/13/05).
A lot of terms and concepts that mean all things to all persons got used with enormously powerful effect in what might be euphemistically called a visitation dispute, which began in a Northern Virginia circuit court. As the Court of Appeals upholds the judge’s orders of not only visitation termination, but all-contact cutoff, the court shows how fragile and imperiled the rights of visitation are and how ready it is to let trial courts turn the survival of two-parent parenting over to the changeable feelings of teenagers. Add to that the very sharp contrast of parenting styles you have in the region’s bizarre mixture of nationalities and cultures, and you can watch some very strange flowers bloom.

The Bottoms cases

Reviews of Bottoms v. Bottoms, 12 VLW 262 (Va. Ct. App. 7/29/97) and Bottoms v. Bottoms, 14 VLW 257 (Va. Ct. App. 6/29/99)

VISITATION DENIAL – SEXUAL ABUSE CHARGE.

It was reasonable for the trial court, in the circumstances of a Henrico County case, to refuse to end the father's already severely limited, supervised, videotaped visitation with his daughter, even though the wife had made charges of child sexual abuse, the Court of Appeals held. Willis v. Willis, unpublished, 15 VLW 217 (6/27/00).

GRANDPARENT VISITATION

The grandparent (person with legitimate interest) visitation statute, Code §20-124.2, is constitutional, and controls an issue of grandparent visitation when only one parent objects, the Court of Appeals explained in Dotson v. Hylton, ____ Va. App. ____, ___ S.E.2d ___, 13 VLW 1430 (5/4/99).Williams & Williams v. Williams & Williams , 256 Va. 19 (1998), doesn’t control at all, because it applies only when both fit natural parents in an intact family object. When they don’t, the grandparent who wants visitation has only to show best interest of the child, not compelling state interest, “detriment to the child,” etc. The visitation order upheld in this case was for the mother of a father who had been sentenced to ten years in prison.

VISITATION — CHURCH — COHABITATION

Probably the biggest recent-case news of 1991 is Carrico v. Blevins, 402 S.E. 2d 235 (Va. App., 1991), which served to gratify and disappoint both custodial and non-custodial parents, making some important law on visitation in the process. As most have heard by now, the Carrico case held: (1) that it is unconstitutional for a court to require a non-religious parent to either take the child to church or let the religious custodial parent have the child during church hours; and (2) that it is all right for a judge to forbid overnight visitation in a place of unmarried cohabitation (thus clearing up an ambiguity that had persisted since Robinson v. Robinson, 361 S.E. 2d 356 (Va. App., 1987)).

VISITATION PARENT'S RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND RULES — ABOLITION OF VISITATION AS REMEDY — CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.

A Richmond trial judge who reduced a father's visitation with his children to a 30-minute phone call each Saturday night applied a harsh remedy to curb the father's religion-based behavior, but did not do anything unconstitutional or legally improper, a Court of Appeals majority said in Roberts v. Roberts, 41 Va. App. 513, 586 S.E.2d 290, 18 VLW 382 (9/16/03).