“A topic that comes up quite a bit in my practice is: What should I do if my child doesn’t want to visit with the other parent? And I think that’s a very difficult question because there’s a legal answer and a philosophical answer.

I think maybe there’s a combination of the two, so with that fusion, my answer would be you should try to get the child to visit with the other parent particularly if that’s the court order. If the court order orders that, there be a visitation at a certain time or place or date then that should be what happens and both parents should be endeavoring to make that happen.

The child may not want to go on a visit for a variety of reasons just like a child may not want to brush their teeth, or eat their broccoli, or do their homework, but the fact of the matter remains that both parents are responsible for following the court order and should do everything they can to ensure that the child will follow the court orders which bind the parents if there is an issue.

If a child doesn’t want to go for whatever reason, an alleged safety issue, some other discomfort that might be happening, that’s probably a deeper discussion. What can be done to alleviate that? What would the court do to alleviate that? Oftentimes if a child has an aversion to a parent for whatever reason, one of the Court’s typical orders will be some kind of therapeutic intervention. Let’s find out what’s wrong. Let’s find out if we can fix it. And let’s try to mend that relationship. Oftentimes that doesn’t work. Oftentimes that leads to protracted litigation. Bottom line is that as a parent if you’re ordered by the court to produce a child for a visit, you should do that.”