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Prevention-of-Domestic-Violence-Act_1 (1)

Family law plays a great role in protecting a child involved in a domestic abuse custody dispute. It is the responsibility of the court to limit to access to the parent involved in domestic abuse. The state laws are in favor of the child and the interest of the child reigns supreme. There are two types of custody, physical custody that decides where the child resides and legal custody on who takes decisions on the child’s behalf. Physical custody can be classified as shared, partial, primary, supervised and complete. Domestic abuse can influence the court’s decision to take a decision on custody. The court takes into consideration past abuse and continued threats if any before deciding on the custody. End of the day safety of the child is primary.

Domestic-Violence-And-Its-Effects-300x300How does the court define domestic abuse? Whenever the child is exposed to bodily injury, sexual assault, rape, phony imprisonment or threats of injury the state can term it as domestic violence. In accordance to the domestic violence law, a household member can be ex-spouse, the sexual partner of the victim, parent of the victim, relative either through marriage or blood and parent of the victim. Domestic abuse can affect custody dispute in a large way. Domestic violence reports five years back are reviewed by the judges in the case of child custody. Any isolated case does not influence the decision of the judge. In case the danger still exists, then the judge may evaluate the situation, and restrictions of the offending party can be imposed. This is how the law takes its course.

In such cases, the court will order supervised restrictions. This is suggested to protect the child from any further risks. A third person is authorized to be part of visitations. The gathering will happen at an authorized location. The duration of the visitation may vary depending on the vitality of the case. Though, it is the discretion of the judge to remove supervised visitation at any point of time considered suitable. Suppose the abusive parent is able to prove that they are of no risk then the supervised visitation can be canceled. In severe cases, the parental rights can be terminated. This happens in cases of severe domestic abuse or when the threat of domestic abuse looms large on the child.