Take the Whole Neighborhood to the Fireworks.
Posted July 4th, 2016.
Categories: Custody Tips, Family Law.
In a child custody case, one parent generally has custody or visitation rights on Independence Day. Like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving Day, our national anniversary on July 4th is often one of the holidays which parents bargain for – or fight over – in a custody dispute.
If you have your child on July 4th, you should capitalize on the festive and communal nature of the holiday. Take your son or daughter to the fireworks, but first, gather up the cousins, the neighbors and their children too. Make it a group event – not just a family event. When you travel with the neighbors and their children, everybody gets a chance to bond, to communicate, and to celebrate under the summer sky.
When other holidays roll around, such as Labor Day or Halloween, the children may want to connect with each other again. In fact, the parents may have discovered valuable relationships and collaborative supervision and transportation arrangements. Perhaps even more importantly, when the next child custody or visitation dispute rolls around, the parent who organized the Independence Day gathering can call upon his neighbors as potential witnesses. The children, if interviewed by psychologists or judges, will remember the July 4th festivities happily. All of this provides more evidence of the child’s significant connections to the parent’s home, neighborhood and community.
