Q: my ex is with a heroin junkie and wants to see my kids no visits by court. will he be able to fighting chance?
he is clean but his gf is back in jail again and has only been clean from heroin since a few days before she went to jail, she keeps using every time she gets out of jail, he doesn't believe that this choice will affect his chance in court. there are no visits ordered by court because he was always in and out of jail he saw them last year they were happy to see him and wanted to see him more and now the kids don't want to see him oldest age 9. he is looking for a job and has stayed clean and complies with his parole officer, yet i worry that he continues to say he is going to marry his gf who is an addict and he is a recovering addict too and the courts will not care because he is clean.
A: Heroin is a very hard addiction to break. Even if your Ex is clean, and you probably only have his word on that, a few days is not enough to be certain that he has gotten away from the addiction. Your situation sounds like supervised visitation would be the better option. Courts do actually care that someone is struggling with an addiction so I am not sure why you assumed otherwise. There are two ways to do supervised visitation, one is with a family member or friend you trust to keep an eye on everything. The other is a formal program where you or your ex pay a fee and all visitation takes place at a specific location. Maybe the form program would be good to get started and then visitation can be relaxed to supervision with a friend or relative. You can also ask that the girlfriend not be allowed to participate in the visitation at least until she proves she is stable. While not scientific, I think you will have to see your ex maintain sobriety for at least a year before you can believe he is getting better. Five years would be more impressive. Also he is getting tested while he is on parole for drugs. Once he is off parole it could change. Take this slowly and insist in supervised visitation. Speak to a family law attorney for how to accomplish this.
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