Everyone marries with the intent that it will be forever…in fact, I doubt that anyone actually thinks on their wedding day, “let’s do this for a while…if it goes well, great, and if not, well, let’s make sure that things are done right!” But the 55 out of every 100 couples that marry who are embarking upon the throws of divorce really should think about their children. Not that staying in an unhappy marriage is what you should do if there are children involved, quite to the contrary. My divorce was even better for my kids because they didn’t have to see all the bad that happened and we had a more normal, structured life after the divorce. The children in the divorce are often no more of a concern in a divorce than the extent of visitation rights. Who gets what and how often? This is decided by a judge, but normally the standard order of visitation applies. This is different for each state and may be changed by the parents if it doesn’t exactly fit their lifestyle. For instance, some families eat strictly at 6:00p.m. This family time is important to the children’s health and well-being, and as most visitation rights begin and end at 6:00p.m., the couple may choose an hour earlier or later to end this time, whatever accommodates the children and the family’s needs best.

Visitation rights are not for everyone. Recently there was an incident where a father was charged with sexual molestation of his 6 year old daughter. When there was no conviction, the visitation rights of the father were restored. During the first time they had to go back to their father’s house, the father approached the mother and whispered in her ear something about his experience with the child and the mother shot him in the face with a shot gun. I’d say she took care of the father's visitation rights. Where the state fails, parents must, absolutely must do what is necessary to protect their children. This mother felt that visitation rights were so detrimental to her child that she was willing to give her life to keep these from being exercised.

When the state’s order visitation, the idea is to encourage and foster love between both parents and the children. In order to do this, there must be time spent with both parents. In their efforts to remain objective during an already emotionally upsetting time in their lives, most parents agree to the standard order of visitation and try their best to make it work. What happens most times though, is that one parent or the other will “skip” their opportunity to exercise their visitation rights and do something else. This leaves a very wide, very dangerous door open if the divorce is less than peaceful. Parents should not take advantage of this opportunity to talk badly about the other parent. In fact, this is the time when a parent can shine the most in the adult lives of their children. As children age, they remember things that were not so prevalent in their lives at the time, like mom siding with them to be mad about dad not coming to get them. When they grow up to realize that, although mom and dad didn’t get along and didn’t love each other anymore, they still loved the children enough to behave, it will come back to the parents ten fold.

The children benefit the most from visitation with the other parent. If you love your children, allow them an unrestricted right to visit their other parent.