© 1991 by Oxford University Press
research-article |
CONDITIONING CHILD SUPPORT PAYMENTS ON VISITATION ACCESS: A PROPOSAL
* Assistant Professor, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, Virginia 24450, USA. I would like to thank William Nelson, Walter Wadlington, Diane Zimmerman and Edmund Kitch for their helpful comments. The Marden Fund at New York University School of Law made it possible for me to pursue this project by providing me with a Fellowship during 1989–90.
Conditioning child support payments on visitation access provides some recourse for a noncustodial parent whose former spouse unfairly denies visitation with the children of the dissolved marriage. This form of conditioning, imposed by judges and sought by parents frustrated in their attempts to see their children, has been criticized as economically and psychologically harmful to the children involved, potentially burdensome to state welfare budgets, biased against women and inconsistent and ineffective in its implementation. Those concerns are discussed in the light of the value of maintaining contact between children and their noncustodial parents and the history of the American case law and statutes on conditioning. Conditioning has never been used as a predicatable element in a comprehensive programme to enforce court-ordered visitation by the noncustodial parent. Such a plan is proposed as an appropriate tool which should be available to courts hearing post-decree child support and visitation disputes.