When a divorce or dissolution of marriage is brought before the family court, child visitation is considered at the same time and according to similar factors as child custody. The term stands for the time in which the non-custodial parent is allowed to meet or visit with his/her child. However, under certain circumstances a parent can be denied child visitation or child custody in the case of sole physical custody. Child visitation is often associated with the term “parenting plan,” which typically outlines the type of legal custody and physical custody of each parent and can also define when the child is to visit or be with the non-custodial parent. Parents can reach such an agreement on their own, this is the best case, or the court can decide on this matter, which is often the worst case scenario.

Typically, the best situation for a child in a divorce, child custody, and child visitation matter is when both parents manage to solve their personal differences to reach an agreement or parenting plan or child visitation schedule out of court. In this case, any agreements reached between both parents can become the parenting plan. When a parenting plan is created and child visitation and child custody issues are resolved, it may not require anymore matters to be brought to the court even if the child is very young. A decade ago, the family courts would often give infant visitation guidelines preventing the non-custodial parent from spending a lot of time with his/her child. Such provisions are not valid anymore, but rather frequent and continuous contact with both parents is encouraged. Off court agreements does not necessarily need to be translated in a written contract and signed by both parents. However, parents may be well advised to have a written and signed parenting plan for future reference in case a child custody or child visitation dispute arises. It can also be used as a stipulation between both parties and then issued as a court order for future enforcement purposes.

Now, what if the parents are not able to reach an agreement on child visitation or child custody? Both parents will often be required to participate in a mediation process before having a court hearing or before a judge hears the case. Typically, the two parents will be assisted to work out a parenting plan by a third-party or mediator, who can be an experienced attorney or social worker. Many child visitation and child custody issues find a happy ending through mediation sessions resulting in a parenting plan agreement, which can then be presented as a stipulation ad then as a court order.

Generally, the worst case is when mediation fails. In this situation, the next step is typically for a court hearing in order to solve the issues. Judges nowadays often require custody evaluations of the family by experts in the field of child psychiatry, psychology or mental health. Licensed social workers can also be called to present evidence for consideration by the court. Once all pieces of evidence have been presented, the court will typically make its decision. This is the worst case child custody and child visitation dispute method because it can be very complex, expensive, and long-draw out. In some highly contested child custody and child visitation cases, child custody and child visitation disputes will eventually result in denying child custody and child visitation rights to one of the parent.

© 2007 Child Custody Coach

Child Custody Coach supplies information, online materials, and coaching services to parents in the field of child custody, namely, divorce, child custody and visitation, child custody evaluations, 730 evaluations, parenting, and all issues related to child custody and divorce. “How to Win Child Custody – Proven Strategies that can Win You Custody and Save You Thousands in Attorney Cost!” is a unique child custody strategy guide written by The Custody Coach and made available by Child Custody Coach in an easy to read, understand, and apply E-Book format. Custody Match is an online consumer and family law attorney matching service to help you in your search for the right attorney for your divorce or child custody case. Custody Match can help you find the right family law attorney, divorce lawyer, or child custody attorney in your area.

Simply typing in the phrase “find an attorney in my county” in your favorite search engine won’t give you your desired results for the most part. “Find an attorney in my county” is a very broad term because there are millions of counties world wide. The search engine won’t know where it is exactly that you need a lawyer. You would be better off typing in a phrase such as “orange county attorney”, or “sacramento county attorney”, or whatever county you need a lawyer in. And always include the quotation marks in your search phrase. That will give you results for the exact phrase that you are searching and nothing else. If you don’t include the quotation marks, the search engine will give you results for each word in the phrase, which is usually in the thousands or even millions of results and may not be what you really need.

Let’s get back to “how to find an attorney in my county” subject. You will get much better results when you search for the exact attorney of your need. For an example, if you need a divorce attorney and you live in macomb county, you simply search for “macomb county divorce attorney”. Also, don’t forget to check for the other expression “macomb county divorce lawyer”. Attorney and lawyer is a same thing, but when the search engines are concerned, attorney and lawyer are two different words. You don’t know if the webmaster of the lawyer’s website has optimized the site for both words. For that reason you need to search for both. This search will produce only a few results that contain this specific phrase. This way you may get a website of an actual divorce attorney in macomb county or you may get garbage results, or even no results at all. It depends on what the search engines have in their database for that search phrase. Whether they have websites from actual attorneys, or from advertisers targeting that search phrase, or from some scammers who are also targeting that search phrase by tricking the search engines.

To narrow down your search even further, if you type in “orange county attorney”, you may get results from orange county in Florida and orange county in California, or elsewhere in the world. So, it would be better to try “orange county ca attorney” or “orange county fl attorney”. Or better yet “orange county ca divorce attorney”. These are very narrow search methods that will produce very few results and straight to the point. But, since you cannot depend on the optimization of the websites, whether they have been done correctly or mischievously (that’s how search engines know which website is for what), you would get a lot more relevant results by splitting your search phrase. By all means, try your search first with the above search phrases because you would have only a few results to evaluate. The next search method will give you hundreds or even thousands of results that would still be relevant, but you need to spend some time weeding out the bad ones or the ones that you don’t need.

What splitting the search phrase means is to include the lesser populated search in quotation marks and the more populated phrase without quotation marks. For an example, if you live in ramsey county and you need a DUI attorney, you can search for: “dui attorney” ramsey county. Also don’t forget: “dui lawyer” ramsey county. So, you only put the type of attorney that you need in quotation marks and the county without quotations. The reason you get thousands of results with this type of search is that every dui attorney website will contain the term dui lawyer or whatever lawyer you are searching for. But it may not contain the county term because either the webmaster forgot about it or didn’t know that he or she needs to include it. So, when you do this type of split phrase search, you will first get all of the results that contain the term dui lawyer (of whatever type of lawyer you’re seeking) from the websites that also contain the term that describes your county, and then the rest of the other websites within that county. You get more choices to choose from.

If the above methods don’t produce the attorney of your need (based on the optimization of the websites and the available sites in the search engine database), instead of wasting hours of endless search with no results, there are still easy ways to “find an attorney in my county” online.

Besides the above methods of typing in the county and the type of attorney in quotations, you can also use some free services to actually find the attorney for you. By the way, have you forgotten your yellow pages or whatever phone book you have in your county? That’s your best bet. But that’s the offline world. However, these types of services are also available online.

Any type of website that deals with locating businesses, such as anywho.com, truelocal.com, yellowpages.com, can find you an attorney in not only your county, but in your city. Just key in the type of attorney that you need under business category (i.e. immigration attorney) and choose your city and state. Also, you can try the lawyer directories such as martindale.com, findlaw.com, lawyers.com, that contain attorneys and law firms from the whole world. Lawyer referral services such as legalmatch.com, globallawyerreferral.com, your local and state bar association, can also find you a lawyer in your county.

Regardless of how you find your lawyer, remember that same principals apply while choosing your attorney. You need to make a list of qualifications you want in your lawyer and interview your prospect lawyers before you decide on who will represent you.

Disclaimer: The author and publisher of this article have done their best to give you useful, informative and accurate information. This article does not represent nor replace the legal advice you need to get from a lawyer, or other professional if the content of the article involves an issue you are facing. Laws vary from state-to-state and change from time-to-time. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions about the issues described in this article. Thank you.