Your marriage ends badly and you don’t trust your former spouse anymore. You get a pit in your stomach thinking about the kids leaving you to go to his or her house for days at a time. If your ex was a bad spouse, it’s easy to imagine that he or she might be a bad parent. These feelings might make you wonder whether your ex can parent properly or whether someone else should be present during his or her parenting time.
Supervised parenting time is a part of the options available under the law in Indiana, but it is not a routine or long-lasting solution. In fact, in most cases, it is not ordered because there is no legal reason for it. In order for a court to order that a parent must be supervised by either another person or a professional agency, the court must find that unsupervised parenting time will endanger the child’s physical health or safety or significantly impair the child’s emotional development. This does not mean that a parent simply does things differently than their co-parent; most parents don’t do things exactly the same way. This means that there is evidence that a parent has already done things in the presence of or to the child that endanger the child.
Fear that something *might* happen usually is insufficient for a court to find that supervised parenting time should be ordered. While a parent may have exhibited behaviors toward their co-parent that suggest they are a bad spouse or partner, that does not automatically mean they are an unfit parent.
Even when a court makes a finding that supervised parenting time should be ordered, whether to be supervised by a family member or at an agency, rarely is such an order permanent. Courts generally give a parent a path forward to help repair their relationship with their child and regain the trust of their co-parent, resulting in a phase-in of unsupervised time up to the Indiana Parenting Time Guidelines (IPTG) regular parenting time schedule at a minimum.
If you have concerns about your co-parent’s ability to provide a safe environment for parenting time, contact Wanzer Edwards to discuss if supervised parenting time is appropriate in your situation.
