Can I withhold visitation if child support payments have not been made?

A parent’s visitation rights may not be conditioned on the other parent’s responsibility to provide child support.   Where there has been an order to pay child support, the parent who is to receive the payment should not refuse to abide by any time-sharing schedule, that may be in effect between the parents, if there has been a failure to pay.

Further, a court may not withhold or terminate visitation rights based on the fact that a parent has not been able to keep up with child support.  Courts have been found to be in error when conditioning a parent’s future visitation on timely payment, even in some instances where the parent had willfully and intentionally not provided support for three years.

Alternatively, where the custodial parent has refused to honor the visitation rights of the noncustodial parent, the noncustodial parent cannot then ignore his or her obligation to pay child support.