PRACTICE AREAS
Family Law
Criminal Defense
ASSOCIATIONS
Legal Issues Involving Visitation In Clark County
Legal Visitation Issues in Las Vegas, Nevada
If you have children and are in the middle of a divorce or child custody dispute, it’s natural to be concerned about visiting your children. You want to be part of their life, but your former spouse is making it difficult. If that’s your situation, what are your options?
When facing child-custody or visitation restrictions in Las Vegas, it’s always wise to have legal counsel at your side. If you’re facing this issue, then you’re likely already past the point of working things out amicably between yourselves. This is true whether you are a mother, a father, a step-parent or a grandparent. So, what can you do?
Steps To Fix Your Visitation Issues
Step one, whether you go it alone, or take the smart route and retain counsel, would be to file a child custody case and a Motion to establish visitation rights in the Las Vegas Family Court. You can obtain the proper forms to do this yourself from the Self Help Center located at the Family Court in Las Vegas, or a lawyer can get these documents prepared and filed right from their office.
If you want to know more about your visitation rights you may refer to NRS 125C.010.
After the case is filed and assigned to a judge, if you filed a Motion, a court date will be set on the motion. In the motion, you will ask for the visitation schedule that you are seeking with your child or children. When filling out your motion, you will want to think carefully about the days and times that you are seeking for visitation because the judge will consider things like when you work, your ex’s work schedule, how far apart each of you live from each other, and the children’s school, what your and your ex’s days off of work are, visitation times that you each might have with children not in the relationship you are going to court about, etc. Thus, take some time and put some thought into your requests because if they don’t make sense, the judge will likely not grant your requests. Also, keep in mind that if your ex responds to your motion that she doesn’t want you to have those times and days that you ask for, don’t be alarmed. This is common and it simply isn’t up to him or her! It’s up to the judge.
In Nevada, the law prefers joint and equal custody between two parents, as long as they are both decent parents, and have the availability to handle equal parenting responsibilities. It’s tougher in Nevada courts to get primarily or sole custody these days than it was in the past. In order to obtain primary custody or sole custody, usually, the other parent would need to either have something wrong with them, e.g. perhaps they do drugs or are abusive, or perhaps the other parents simply isn’t available because they work 2 jobs and travel for their employment.
Once your Motion is filed the other side of the case will have a chance to respond to your motion, and then you can also respond to their response, called a “Reply”. Then all parties and their lawyers, if they have them, will appear at the Motion hearing and argue their case. In Clark County, most judges will send the parties to Mediate their case which is usually done on the Courthouse property at the Family Mediation Center. The Judge will usually also issue orders regarding temporary custody orders, child support, and anything else that the parties request in their Motion for the judge to consider.
The court then sets a return from mediation hearing to see if the parties were successful at Mediating the case. If so, the judge will sign the full or partial parenting agreement that the parties reached at Mediation and it will become the Order of the Court regarding the parties’ timeshare, holiday times, and custody designations. If the parties didn’t agree on everything at mediation, then the Court will set a Trial date called an “Evidentiary Hearing” so that the parties can have their day in court and get a final adjudication on the issues of visitation and custody issues.
Learning more of evidentiary hearing refer to NRS 34.770.
Huggins Law Office is an experienced law firm in child custody litigation. We have been helping families with child custody and visitation issues in Las Vegas for over twenty (20) years! To learn more about how Huggins Law Office can help you with your visitation or custody issues give us a call and set up a free consultation today at 702-387-4014.