If you have gone through a divorce, you may not be on the most favorable of terms with your former spouse. After all, you have some valid reasons for why your marriage did not work. Still, if you share custody of your child with your ex-spouse, you should be able to rely on him or her to put your differences aside and focus on raising the young one in your family.
Sometimes, jaded co-parents do the opposite. That is, your former partner may try to interfere with the relationship you have with your son or daughter. If that happens, both you and your child are apt to experience harm. As such, you should not take parental interference lightly.
Types of parental interference
No parent is perfect. Accordingly, you probably should not treat a single incident as evidence of parental interference. On the contrary, you should watch for a pattern of behaviors that indicates your ex-spouse is working against you. Here are some common types of parental interference:
- Telling the child that the other parent does not love him or her
- Encouraging the child to fear, distrust, disobey or disrespect the other parent
- Asking the child to skip visitations with the other parent
- Uninviting the other parent from important parent-child activities
Options for stopping parental interference
If your custody order prohibits parental interference, you may be able to seek enforcement of the provision in court. That is, if your ex-spouse interferes with your parent-child relationship, a judge may hold him or her in contempt of court. On the other hand, if your custody order is silent on the subject of interference, you may still be able to ask a judge to intervene. After all, parental interference is not usually in the child’s leading interests, which is the legal standard Mississippi judges use to settle custody matters.
The relationship you have with your son or daughter is both meaningful and valuable. Nonetheless, a co-parent may want to ruin that relationship. Luckily, once you identify parental interference, you can work to stop it.
