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Overnight Access for Infants, Toddlers & Young Children

Defending Your Right To Overnight Access For Your Young Child

Are you being denied overnight access to your infant or young child? If this is the case, do not assume that it is right, fair, or reflective of your child’s best interests. A child’s relationship and attachment to both parents should be nurtured, even at a very young age. This means prioritizing equal parenting around the clock and at the earliest possible date.

At Gene C. Colman Family Law Centre, we have been helping mothers and fathers in Toronto, Ontario, find solutions that protect the important bond between parent and child. We are compassionate, passionate, and strategic in every aspect of our work, helping to achieve the best possible outcome for your case.

Advocating For Equal Parenting, Day And Night

It was once believed that young children benefited from having a single, strong relationship with their primary caregiver. As such, the tendency to restrict overnight access to one parent, usually the mother, was a common occurrence. Fathers are capable too!

Today, the importance of having both parents involved in the child’s life has been widely recognized in social science literature, giving hope to parents who may have otherwise felt excluded.

Challenging The Status Quo

For most parents, the thought of being separated from their children is devastating. While default custody and access parenting arrangements may seem like the only options, it is important to recognize that there are exceptions. At Gene C. Colman Family Law Centre, we tirelessly advocate on your behalf to help ensure that your child’s right to a relationship with you is protected.

When it comes to overnight access for young children, we are deeply familiar with precedent-setting cases and social science literature regarding overnight access for infants and toddlers. We draw on our extensive experience and understanding of the law to find strategic ways to devise a strategy that reflects your situation.

Here are some brief statements from the literature:

  • Infants and toddlers clearly benefit from father involvement.
  • Researchers who advocate for blanket restriction on father contact with infants and toddlers use invalid methodologies and distort their own data.
  • Sokol … concluded that overnights with father do not harm the mother-child relationship.
  • The more overnights that infants and toddlers spent with their fathers, up to half of all overnights, the higher the quality and the more secure were their long-term relationships with fathers and mothers.
  • Instead of discouraging frequent overnights for litigating parents, this study supports encouraging more overnights to overcome the potential harmful impact of parent conflict on father-child relationships.
  • There are legal precedents to support the proposition that dads should have significant time with infants and toddlers.
  • This is a developing area of the law.

Don’t let others tell you that babies and little ones have little if any rights to spend time with their fathers!

Preserve Father/infant & Toddler Relationships. That’s What We Do.

Speak To A Family Lawyer Today

Schedule your initial consultation by calling 888-389-3099 or send us an email.

See:

Our Blog Post about breastfeeding and father access

Warshak, Richard A.: Blanket Restrictions: Overnight Contact Between Parents and Young Children, Family and Conciliation Courts Review, Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2000, pages 422-445.

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