Right of access between children and parents
1. In a divorce proceeding pending before a German family court, both parents apply for sole custody of their children. In any case, the British father at least wants visiting rights. The mother fears that the children’s father will retain the children if they visit him in the U.K.
2. A child born from a German-French relationship lives with the mother. As long as she lives in Germany, contacts take place between father and child on a regular basis. When the mother returns with the child to France where she meets a new partner, conflicts arise between the parents about the exercise of visitingrights.
After a separation or divorce, the contact between the child and one of the parents often breaks down. Especially when parents and children live in different countries and the parents battle over other issues, such as custody or maintenance payments, it is often very difficult to maintain a relationship between the child and the other parent.
ISS German Branch
- provides social reports which serve as the basis for the decision-making of the courts in the proceedings on visiting-rights.
- offers counselling on how the parent-child relationship can be maintained or re-established, possibly over a wide geographical distance.
- tries to work towards an amicable agreement on visiting-rights, and possibly to arrange supervised contacts, with the help of local agencies in the two countries.
- tries to establish contact between the child and the other parent if contacts have broken down or never existed.