Today, we’re going to be talking about whether you can have limitations placed on a person’s relationship with significant others going into the future and whether that can be incorporated into a court order. One of the most common questions I get is if limitations can be placed on who that person can be around going into the future? That’s something that can certainly be negotiated. I can tell you that generally speaking, you’ve got to have a very good reason if you argue it in front of the judge for placing limitations like that. For the most part, the courts in West Virginia are generally going to trust each person to make the right decisions about significant others in terms of whether a person should be able to have that person around the children.
Most people are expected to be able to make those kinds of decisions if kids are involved. If there’s no kids involved, then the court is not going to place any limitations on your significant others going into the future. However, even then, sometimes people will negotiate. It will be a part of the negotiation process and people will come to an agreement on limitations about who the person can be around. You can agree to those things, but it’s usually not something that the court is necessarily going to automatically order. Like for example, I’ve seen people negotiate out that before getting into a serious relationship with somebody, the other person has to meet them since they’re going to be around their kids.
Let’s say that somebody is going to be moving in with your ex and will be around the kids and you need to meet the person before they move in. Generally speaking, the courts are not going to put stipulations like that in a West Virginia divorce order. For the most part, your future relationships are something that goes about with the negotiation process and people sometimes will agree to do that. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just do whatever you want without there being some sort of intervention by the court.
You just have to use common sense. Not having your kids around sex offenders, not having your kids around people who have drug problems, those are sort of things that would be common sense. Obviously you don’t want to do that. The main question is if it can be incorporated into an order in terms of limitations being put on the other person.
What they can and can’t do in terms of the children being around significant others stipulations can be put on that, but it’s usually done through the negotiation process. If there’s a history of one person being around highly dangerous people or somebody who could reasonably be considered to be a danger in those instances, the courts will sometimes put limitations if it’s brought up in court. That’s in a broad sense how courts will deal with significant others and whether any kind of limitations will be placed on them. That’s a summary of you or your ex micromanaging future relationships after your West Virginia divorce.
