Total Divorce Blog

An interesting story in this weekend’s Daily Herald detailed a proposed Illinois law that would take advantage of modern technology and better allow divorced parents to communicate with their children, especially when one parent lives out of state following the divorce. Specifically, this proposed Illinois child visitation law would recognize virtual visitations via email, instant messaging and video conferencing. These online visits would not replace actual contact between a physically-distant parent and his or her children but would rather be supplemental to required physical contact. Under this proposed Illinois law, these meetings could either be court-ordered or voluntary; regardless, judges could not use virtual time as a reason to approve custody relocation requests. The story added that Wisconsin is the only other state to have a similar law in place.

Proponents of this Illinois child visitation law point out many positive aspects of recognizing online visits. While saying that there is no substitute to the nuclear family in the story, Kane County Associate Judge James Hallock expressed his opinion that online visits are a more simple way to mend the relationships between children and the far-away parent, especially when considering travel considerations and other costs. Others have said that online visits allow children to develop more personal relationships with their non-custodial parent by actually seeing his or her face during a conversation.

Critics of this proposed Illinois child visitation law worry whether many families know this type of technology exists. As for those parents who do, opponents question whether they could abuse such a law and use online visits as a means to skip out on in-person visits. These opponents worry that children would be crushed and extremely disappointed if a parent did this to them after sustaining and building relationships online following a divorce.

The Daily Herald story detailed that this Illinois visitation proposal is currently being considered by the state Senate after already passing in the House without any opposition. The story added that seven other states are taking a look at a very similar concept. We’ll keep you updated on any more developments with this proposed Illinois law.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 9:51 am and is filed under Child Custody Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.