Parenting Orders

When a parenting agreement is breached, we as the police are often the first phone call made by either party.  While we are always here to help, it needs to be understood that our primary role is NOT the enforcement of civil court orders.  You can well imagine that we’d have little time for anything else if we had to run down people who don’t pay on judgements, didn’t pay child support, or mediate between conflicting business partners.  Those issues fall under civil law, not criminal law and it’s an area of law that we don’t generally get involved in.

That being said, child custody issues are a little different.  While it technically remains civil law, Judges often do order us to enforce the provisions of the agreement by including a phrase as such in the order.  That being said, it is crucial that all parties ensure the order is structured properly and with no room for interpretation.  If your parenting agreement is out of date, we likely won’t be able to help you.  If the agreement has an element that “could” be questioned, i.e. not black and white, we likely can’t help you.  If you don’t have a parenting agreement, unless there is a safety issue at play we certainly won’t be able to help you.

It really is a lose – lose scenario for us because often times neither party is completely satisfied.  My advice if you are entering into a separation is to sit down and park everything to do with history, money, and hostility and have a mediated conversation about your parenting plans moving forward.  Get that out of the way first before old wounds are opened and you get too positional on finances, property, etc.  We’ll help when we can.  Stay Safe.