“If the parents of a child were never married, how does that work for child visitation? Simple answer is it would be the same as if the parents were married.

Generally speaking, child custody determinations in family court in California are based on the best interest of the child and whether or not the parents had previously been married or not really has no bearing on that. What’s important there is, what is the conduct of the parents with the child? What is the bond? What is the typical contact between the parents? So on and so forth.

Quite frankly, if parents were married that might create more of a bond because in theory they lived in the same house together, it was one household they spent equal time with the child when they were married and that could be very different than if there was a dating relationship and one of the two parents spent much more time with the child from the time of birth. Practically not much of a difference, certainly the standards regarding best interest would be the same but generally speaking there could be an argument for a married couple that there was more of an equal or in-depth bonding particularly when the child was younger.

These are really kind of simple issues, not a very big distinction, but when arguing before the court you should definitely understand what the history is between the parents and the parent should be able to articulate what that is to get the best possible outcome in a custody determination.”