After a divorce, there are some situations in which the standing court order may no longer fit your life. You need to have it modified or changed. After all, the court may issue this order when you have very young children and life can change significantly over the next 20 years, as they grow up.
One important thing to keep in mind is that you should never violate the court order. You always want to modify it first. You must do this in the correct order so that you’re not accused of infringing on your ex’s rights.
Moving to a different state
For instance, maybe you need more help raising your children and you want to move to live near extended family members. But doing so would violate the court order because you’re supposed to share parenting time with your ex. You may be able to provide good-faith reasons why the move should be approved, but you certainly don’t want to move first and try to modify the order after.
Unpaid child support
Another example is if your ex is supposed to pay child support and they failed to do so. Sometimes, people consider withholding visitation rights, attempting to force their ex to pay child support. But this would be a violation of the court order and should not be done. If anything, you should approach the court to enforce the support order or modify the custody order to remove custody rights from your ex. But this is not something that you can just decide to do on your own.
It is crucial that you understand exactly what legal steps to take. A situation like this can be complex, so it may be helpful to have an experienced legal team on your side.
