Overview 

If you are the parent of a child, the law says that you have parental rights and responsibilities. You have the responsibility to ensure that your child is safe and well and you have the right the right to make decisions about your child’s upbringing, including where your child should live. If you’re not living together, you have both the right and the responsibility to spend time with your child on a regular basis.

The law gives parental rights and responsibilities to parents automatically. What if you are a grandparent, a sibling or an aunt or an uncle wanting to be a part of the life of a child in your family? It is possible to apply to the court for parental rights and responsibilities. Whatever the scenario, if you don’t have parental rights and responsibilities, then we can give you advice about how to try and get them.

Typically, both parents have parental rights and responsibilities. The law says that parents can exercise parental rights and responsibilities independently of one another. But in practice, it is not always so simple. When parents cannot agree about care and welfare arrangements for their child, ultimately, one or other of them can ask a sheriff to decide.

A sheriff can be asked to make a decision who a child gets to see and spend time with. 

How We Can Help!

We can give you advice about what orders the courts might make in terms of who your children get to see.  When lawyers talk about the courts making orders about who children get to see, they used to talk about access. These orders are now called contact orders.

Whether you want to prevent, limit, restrict or regulate the contact that your child has with another person we can help.  Whether you want to establish, re-instate or increase your contact, we can help.

If you want overnight, weekend or holiday contact, we can help.

If you are thinking about, or your ex is talking about moving away from your town or city, we can help.  Similarly, in cases where one of you wants to travel or even live abroad, we can help.

We have experience of clients who believe that their ex is turning their children against them.  We have been asked about Parental Alienation Syndrome.  We can help in that case as well.

CONTACT OUR FAMILY LAW SOLICITORS GLASGOW & EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

Beltrami & Company are conveniently based near Glasgow city centre but operate throughout Scotland.  Any calls to our offices out with normal business hours can be dealt with by an experienced solicitor.