What is being decided
Two separate things that people run together.
Where the child lives. Which parent exercises parental rights day to day.
How the other parent sees them. The contact arrangement: days, holidays, celebrations, contact at a distance.
Parental rights are not taken away from the other parent. They remain a parent with their own rights and duties, including over important decisions about the child.
What weighs in the assessment
The child’s interests, not how the parents behave towards each other. That sounds obvious and it is exactly what gets missed most often.
What is looked at is age, attachment, who has been caring for the child so far, conditions and the ability to provide stability, and each parent’s attitude to contact with the other.
That last one matters. A parent who obstructs the child’s relationship with the other harms their own position.
What does not help
Drawing the child into the dispute. Recordings made with the child. Accusations with nothing behind them. Stopping contact in response to unpaid maintenance.
Maintenance and contact are two separate obligations. One is not a penalty for the other, and trying to use it that way rebounds on whoever does it.
If the order is not being followed
There is a procedure. Non-compliance with a contact arrangement is not something you have to endure for years, and it is dealt with.
The reverse too: if you are the parent not seeing your child despite having the right, that does not fix itself by waiting.
If one parent lives abroad
That is common and raises its own questions: which court decides, what a contact arrangement looks like across a distance, and what happens when the child has to travel. See taking a child abroad.
One more thing
If even a little understanding remains between you and the other parent, an agreement beats any judgment. Not because it is fairer, but because the child lives inside it every day, while a judgment is only paper.
What I will need
The child’s birth certificate. Any existing judgment or agreement. Whatever documents the present situation: correspondence, schedules, evidence of care. If there have been breaches, dates and details.
This page provides general information and does not constitute legal advice on any specific case. Rights and deadlines depend on the facts and the applicable law.