I don't want to rain on any parades and I will try avoid the soapbox, but I am a dedicated advocate for father's rights and it's a subject that all fathers and men considering fatherhood should be aware of. Sorry if this comes across as inappropriate and I thoroughly hope you never need this information or the changes in the laws that many non-custodial fathers across America are fighting for.

While there are strong federal and state laws and programs that enforce child support (and rightly so), there are no equivalent laws or programs to enforce child visitation in the often tragic case of divorce. More and more many non-custodial parents, both men and women and their children, are being subjected to harassment and/or denial of their legal child visitation rights. It's not a well-known problem and few politicians are willing to openly talk about it. In many states, while child visitation is a standard part of most divorce agreements where domestic abuse is not an issue, enforcement of such legal visitation is often impossible. By law, divorced non-custodial parents have no actual rights at all in most states. Visitation with a non-custodial parent is considered the right of the child - but when it is denied or interfered with the non-custodial parent's sole means of enforcement is to personally pay for contempt of court charges, which can be expensive and hard to enforce. It's often a case of how much justice you can afford. Most state's only have laws that enforce child visitation when the non-custodial father or mother is in prison. Yet sadly, there are a rising number of "vindictive mothers" (the opposite of the so-called "deadbeat dad", the name for non-custodial parent who don't pay child support) that limit or interfer with legal child visitation as a means of inflicting emotional damage to the parent who does not have custody.

Many divorced fathers and advocacy groups are fighting to make a significant change in the laws: if visitation is the right of the child and not the parent, then abuse of visitation should be considered child abuse. This change would give non-custodial parents the law enforcement resources to protect their visitation and/or change custody in cases where children are used as weapons of cruelty by their custodial parent.

Again, I hope you never have direct need of this information, but if there are father's advocacy groups such as 'Fathers Are Parents Too' in your area, consider lending them your support. Thanks.