Visitation Rights

Have questions about your visitation rights? Wondering what to do if a custodial parent refuses visitation in Texas? Call, text, or chat,  the Texas Parent Helpline to share your frustrations and get resources.

Learn More About Visitation Rights

When parents’ divorce, they or a judge must decide the best way to divide custody and child visitation rights. If the court awards sole custody to one parent, the judge may award visitation rights to the other (noncustodial) paren.  Usually, it’s in the child’s best interest to continue a healthy relationship with both parents.  The court may award reasonable, unsupervised, or supervised visitation. Most agreements about child visitation rights are unique to the parents’ situation and the particular court that determined those rights. Due to these circumstantial complexities, a parent with concerns about their visitation rights will usually need to talk to a lawyer to work through any questions they have.
In Texas, about 10% of noncustodial parents are mothers. So, questions about visitation rights could come from either parent.

Visitation rights are established in the Family Court System by a Standard Possession Order (SPO).  The SPO considers the child's needs, age, circumstances, and best interest. The court can modify or deny the SPO if it's not in the child's best interest anymore, or if the child is under three years old.

Texas has a set of guidelines for establishing visitation rights for non-custodial parents, including a Standard Possession Order (SPO), See example below:

Visitation	Schedule
Every Thursday	6–8 PM during the school year
Every 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend	6 PM on Friday to 6 PM on Sunday
Summer vacation	30 consecutive days for the non-custodial parent, or 42 days if the parents live more than 100 miles apart
School spring break	In even years, the non-custodial parent has the same period of possession as the primary parent
Alternating holidays	The non-custodial parent has the right to alternating holidays

 

Not every case is the same, as the above example shows.  A visitation schedule will be established while in the Family Court proceedings.

There are resources available regarding court proceedings, Call, text, or chat  the Texas Parent Helpline anytime, day or night, for free to start a conversation about your visitation rights.