Contact (law)

In family law, contact, visitation and access are synonym terms that denotes the time that a child spends with the noncustodial parent, according to an agreed or court specified parenting schedule.^[1][2] The visitation term is not used in a shared parenting arrangement where both parents have joint physical custody.^[3]

Unsupervised visitation is the most common type, when the parent may take the child to his or her home or enjoy any outing with the child. In supervised visitation, another adult must be present, and there is sometimes a court order to occur at a predetermined supervised child contact centre. Virtual visitation uses video-conferencing technology to allow contact when a child lives far away from the parent.^[3] Visitation is considered only a right and not an obligation of a non residential parent, meaning that a non custodial parent can leave a child at home with the custodial parent on his/her scheduled visitation days for any reason.