Dedicated Legal Counsel On Your Side

  1. Home
  2.  » 
  3. Child Custody
  4.  » What You Should Understand About Virtual Visitations

What You Should Understand About Virtual Visitations

On Behalf of | Jun 1, 2021 | Child Custody, Divorce

Virtual visitations have only become possible within the last couple of years because of the advancements of technology and changes in cultural norms and people’s comfort with certain services, such as Skype and Facetime. With the increasing ability to do virtual visitations, there’s a lot of debate about how the technology should be used for visitations and what the pros and cons of such an arrangement are. If you’re in a situation in which virtual visitations might play a role in your New Jersey child custody placement, you should take the time to understand some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of these types of visitations, and you should understand more about what you should understand when trying to determine the custody arrangement and schedule.

Benefits and complications to virtual visitations

If one parent has primary custody and plans to move out of the state or at least to another part of the state, the use of virtual visitations can help the other parent keep in contact with their child even over long distances. It’s important for the parent and child to be able to see each other, and virtual visitations can be used to let the parent interact through conversation, a bedtime story, helping with homework, and other activities that a parent would normally be around for if they were in the same home as their child. One of the potential complications to this arrangement is a judge allowing the parent with primary custody to move when moving wouldn’t normally be warranted or granted when determining a custody arrangement in family law.

Have a detailed custody arrangement

Having a detailed parenting plan can help avoid complications and conflict in the future. Parents who don’t have primary custody but would like to have more contact with their child without going into the home of the other parent might ask to spend time with their child right before bedtime. Having a good parenting plan can also help you determine beforehand to what extent virtual visitations will be used to supplement regular visitations.

When you’re trying to figure out the best plan for your child, you might choose to have virtual visitations within your plan, or you might decide against it. But you should take the time to think through the pros and cons of each situation.