Visitation & Parenting Time

In Missouri, custody has two parts: legal custody, which is decision-making authority, and physical custody, which is where the child lives. Visitation is the term RSMo § 452.400 uses for the time a child spends with a parent who does not have physical custody. Where the parents share joint physical custody under RSMo § 452.375, each parent’s time is a period of custody rather than visitation, and since 2023 the presumption is that those periods should be equal or approximately equal.

The distinction matters less than it sounds. Both kinds of parenting time are set out in the same written parenting plan, both are enforced with the same family access motion and contempt remedies, and both require a specific schedule. It matters most on modification: visitation may be modified whenever it would serve the child’s best interests, while custody requires a change in circumstances under RSMo § 452.410.

There is no statutory schedule, and “reasonable” in RSMo § 452.400 means reasonable for the child in the particular case. In practice, where one parent has sole physical custody, common arrangements include alternating weekends with a weeknight, extended summer time, and alternating holidays — but since the 2023 presumption of equal parenting time, the question is more often why a schedule departs from equal at all.

What is not reasonable is a schedule that exists only on paper. RSMo § 452.310 requires every parenting plan to set out a specific written schedule with the weekday and weekend rotation, major holidays and school breaks, birthdays, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, exchange times and places, and transportation. A plan that says “as the parties agree” works exactly as long as the parties agree, which is when you do not need it.

The Missouri courts publish a template parenting plan as Form CAFC501. It is a floor. A plan drafted for your family — the child’s school calendar, the parents’ work schedules, the distance between homes — is what prevents the next case.

File a family access motion. Under RSMo § 452.400, when custody or visitation has been denied or interfered with without good cause, the aggrieved parent may file a verified motion stating the specific facts. The clerk issues a summons within five court days, and the court must dispose of the motion within sixty days of service.

The court may order compensatory visitation of not less than the time that was denied; counseling at the violating parent’s expense; a fine of up to $500 payable to you; and a bond to ensure future compliance. Attorney’s fees and costs shall be assessed against the parent who unreasonably denied visitation, if requested and for good cause. You may also file a motion for contempt, and a persistent pattern of denial is a change of circumstances that can support a change of custody.

Before you file, document. A contemporaneous log of every denied exchange — date, time, what was said, in writing — is what wins these motions. And do not withhold support in response; RSMo § 452.365 makes clear that the other parent’s violation does not suspend your obligations.

No. RSMo § 452.365 provides that if a party fails to comply with a provision of the judgment, the other party’s obligation to pay support or to permit visitation is not suspended. Support and visitation are separate obligations, each enforceable on its own. A parent who stops paying accumulates an arrearage that is a judgment, subject to interest and income withholding, and arrives in court as the parent who is also violating the order.

The statute does give the court a tool in your favor: under RSMo § 452.340 a court may abate, in whole or in part, a past or future support obligation where the custodial parent has, without good cause, failed to provide visitation or custody as ordered. That is a remedy the court grants on motion. It is not a remedy a parent grants themselves.

The right sequence is to keep paying, file the family access motion, and ask for abatement, compensatory time and fees in the same proceeding.

No, for the same reason. RSMo § 452.365 cuts both ways: the paying parent’s failure to pay does not suspend your obligation to permit visitation. Withholding the child is a denial of visitation without good cause, and it exposes you to a family access motion, compensatory time, a fine, attorney’s fees, and a custody modification in which the court asks which parent is more likely to allow the child contact with the other.

Support arrears have their own remedies — income withholding under RSMo § 452.350, a judgment for the arrearage with interest, and the collection tools available through the Family Support Division. Use those. The child’s time with the other parent is the child’s, not a lever.

Only on an endangerment finding. RSMo § 452.400 provides that a court shall not restrict a parent’s visitation rights unless it finds that the visitation would endanger the child’s physical health or impair emotional development. That finding requires evidence, and the burden is on the parent seeking the restriction.

Where the court makes that finding, it may order supervised visitation — visitation in the presence of a responsible adult the court appoints for the child’s protection — and, where a parent has been found to have committed domestic violence or abuse, may condition unsupervised visitation on completion of treatment. A parent convicted of certain felonies in which a child was the victim is barred from unsupervised visitation. Where child abuse or neglect is alleged, appointment of a guardian ad litem under RSMo § 452.423 is mandatory.

A court will also consider evidence of domestic violence in setting any visitation, and RSMo § 452.375 requires specific findings, where domestic violence has occurred, that the arrangement ordered best protects the child and the parent who was the victim.

Supervised visitation is parenting time that takes place in the presence of a third party appointed by the court to protect the child. The supervisor may be a relative or friend both parents accept, a professional supervisor, or a supervised visitation center, of which there are several in the St. Louis area. The order specifies who supervises, where, how often and for how long, and who pays.

It is almost always intended as a stage rather than a permanent arrangement. The order typically sets conditions — completion of a treatment program, a period of clean drug screens, a course of counseling, a number of successful supervised visits — after which the parent may move to modify to unsupervised time. Because visitation may be modified whenever it serves the child’s best interests under RSMo § 452.400, that motion does not require a change of circumstances, only evidence that the conditions have been met and unsupervised time is now safe.

The parent under supervision helps their own case by treating it seriously: showing up, on time, every time, and meeting every condition the order sets.

In defined circumstances. Under RSMo § 452.402 a grandparent may seek visitation where it has been unreasonably denied for more than sixty days and one of three situations applies: the parents have filed for dissolution or legal separation, in which case the grandparent may intervene or later move to modify; one parent is deceased and the surviving parent denies visitation; or the child has lived in the grandparent’s home for at least six months within the twenty-four months before the petition.

A grandparent may not file where the parents are married to each other and living together with the child — the legislature drew that line to protect intact families from litigation. Where a petition is allowed, the court grants visitation only on finding it in the child’s best interests and not endangering the child’s health or emotional development. The court may appoint a guardian ad litem and order a home study, and the right may terminate if the child is adopted. The court may award fees to the prevailing party.

The practical advice for grandparents is to try everything short of litigation first, and to document the denial. For parents, the practical advice is that a reasonable accommodation usually costs less than a petition.

Not without following RSMo § 452.377, which applies to any change in the child’s principal residence for ninety days or more — across town as well as across the state line. The relocating parent must give written notice by certified mail, return receipt requested, at least sixty days before the move, with the new address, the date, the specific reasons, and a proposed revised schedule. You have thirty days from receipt to file a motion objecting; the relocating parent has fourteen days to reply, and bears the burden of proving the move is in good faith and in the child’s best interests.

If the move goes forward, the court must specify how transportation costs will be allocated and adjust support as appropriate, and the new schedule usually trades frequency for duration — longer summer and holiday periods in place of weeknights. Moving without notice is a factor in modifying custody, a basis for an order returning the child, and grounds for fees. Under RSMo § 452.411 a parent’s move to another state is deemed a change of circumstances.

Yes, within reason. A parenting plan is an order directed at the parents, and a custodial parent who allows a child to opt out of visitation is, in the court’s eyes, the parent who denied it. Courts expect a parent to do what a parent does — insist, encourage, deliver the child to the exchange — and a child’s reluctance is not good cause for non-compliance unless there is a safety issue.

If the reluctance is sustained and has a reason behind it, the remedy is a motion to modify, not unilateral action. Visitation may be modified whenever it serves the child’s best interests under RSMo § 452.400. The court may interview the child in chambers under RSMo § 452.385 or appoint a guardian ad litem to find out what is going on. And if the child is in danger in the other home, an order of protection is available immediately.

What courts watch for is the parent who reports that the child “doesn’t want to go” every other weekend, with nothing behind it. That pattern reads as alienation, and it is one of the strongest facts in the other parent’s favor on a custody modification.

More easily than a custody order. RSMo § 452.400 allows the court to modify an order granting or denying visitation “whenever modification would serve the best interests of the child” — no change of circumstances required. Restricting visitation still requires the endangerment finding, and any modification of custody, as opposed to visitation, requires the change-of-circumstances showing in RSMo § 452.410.

A proposed parenting plan is due within thirty days of service on any motion to modify. Most visitation modifications are agreed — a child who has started school, a parent whose shift changed — and can be submitted as a stipulated judgment without a hearing. See modifications.

The statute protects you. Under RSMo § 452.412 a parent’s absence, relocation or failure to comply with a custody or visitation order is not, by itself, sufficient to justify a modification when the reason is activation to military service and deployment out of state. Any order entered during the deployment is temporary, cannot exceed the length of the deployment, and the returning parent is entitled to a hearing before any permanent order is entered unless that right is waived in writing.

On support, RSMo § 452.416 provides that a reserve or National Guard member’s change in income on being called to active duty for more than thirty days is a change in circumstances substantial and continuing enough to modify the support order.

The current order and parenting plan; your log of denied or interfered-with time, with dates; the texts or emails around each incident; any protective orders or police reports; and the school calendar. If you have received a relocation notice, bring it and note the date you received it — the thirty-day clock is running.

You will leave knowing whether the order is specific enough to enforce, whether a family access motion is the right tool, what the court can award, and what it would cost. Where the order is the problem rather than the other parent, you will know what a modification would need to say.