Can you Keep your Children away from your Ex’s new Significant Other

There are often disagreements about when a parent should bring new people around your child. Sometimes you may even have concerns about the situation that make you want to keep the children way form your ex’s new significant other. What are your rights in this type of situation?

Common Concerns

Having a parent expose your child to a new person alone is typically not enough to limit the contact between your child and the new person. Typically you need to show something more. So what are the specific concerns you have? Typical examples of concerns could include allowing the new person to discipline your child. Allowing them act as a caregiver while they are not around and not giving you the opportunity to watch the children instead. There could also be changes such as your ex drinking, staying out late, or using drugs. You could also have concerns about the other person, such as an extensive criminal background, registration as sex offender, or maybe they have a violent background. What is important is that you specifically identify these concerns and collect evidence that you can use if you want to put a restriction in place with regards to parenting time.

What Should you Do?

So what do you do in this situation? Typically a court is not going intervene if your only concern is that they introduced them too early and it is awkward for the children. The courts are to consider the best interests of the child and they need specific evidence to restrict a parents parenting time. So if you have specific concerns you should contact an attorney about your case because you could move to modify parenting time to limit the children’s contact with this third party.