The father wanted the mother responsible for visitation abuse and indirect civil contempt. He said that mother had caused several alleged missed visitation periods by him. These periods included regular weekend time, Father’s Day, winter break, and summer vacation time. Mother felt that her behavior was appropriate.
Father told the court about his summer parenting time in 2014. He said that he was planning on going to Wisconsin with the child for a fishing trip but that the night before his vacation, he received an e-mail from mother “which was more so an itinerary of every day of my vacation activities that[the child] had to be at. And it varied from baseball games, practices, golf, band car wash, band practices. So pretty much every day of my vacation he had stuff I had to take him to.”
Father testified that mother had not provided him notice of these activities prior to that e-mail and that he did not have access to the schedule, school records, or band activities. Of course, the child was caught in the middle, due to the mother’s behavior.
The mother had allowed the child to “pick and choose” when he would visit with his father. The mother had allowed the child to play in a baseball game after being too ill to visit with his father the day before.
The trial court found that the mother had been engaged in visitation abuse. The mother appealed. The Appellate Court agreed with the Trial Court that mother had indeed denied father his visitation. She was responsible for visitation abuse. The trial court ordered make-up visitation for all of the periods of time the father was not able to have visitation. The Court agreed with father that he is entitled to the kind of visitation that he missed. Mother wanted to allow him makeup visitation for events such as Blackhawk’s games. The visitation abuse statute states that makeup visitation time should be ‘make up visitation of the same time period, such as weekend for weekend, holiday for holiday’.
In re Marriage of Knoll, 2016 IL App (1st) 152494
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