Visitation Systems Research

It is stipulated in the marriage law of China that both the man and womanhave freedom to divorce under the condition of truly emotion breaking. Thisstipulation not only accords with the constitutional spirit of freedom to marry, butalso indicates a full respect to the autonomy of the will of both parties involvingin a marriage. However, dissolution of marriage involves not only changes ofrights and obligations of both parties concerned, but also exerts a great influenceon children's interests. Thus the freedom to divorce should be restricted tobalance the relations between personal interests and other interests, personalinterests and social interests. The proportion of one-child family keeps growingalong with the implementation of the Family Plan in China. As a result, thedisputes on child custody between divorced couples are increasing. The design ofvisitation system is to cater for the needs to resolve such disputes. No doubt, visitation system carries significant theoretical and practical importance to handledivorce disputes, maintain social stability, and construct a harmonious society.However, the current adopted system of visitation in China emphasizes on thedivorced couple's interest. It remains unspecific as to the protection of prematurechildren's interests, who are the greatest victims of their parents' divorce. Thisdeficiency is against the developing tendency of modem marital legislation.Guided by the principle of best interests for children, this paper firstly carries outa comparison study on visitation system in major countries around the world, andthen probes into the successful experience as well as weak points of the currentadopted system in China. Finally the paper proposes some suggestions to betterimprove the visitation system in China.The thesis consists of introduction, main body and conclusion. The mainbody includes:Part one is a brief account of visitation system describing its content, nature, principle, and significance. Visitation right is a right to contact, meet, andexchange with premature children by either father or mother involved in divorce.But in reality, the party who has the custody right refuses the other party to visittheir children by every possible reason. It is very difficult for such party to meet his/her children, much less to fulfill his/her obligation to children's education, supervision, and protection. Meanwhile, frequent visits interferes the regulardaily life of children as well as the party with custody right. Even worse, someparty assaults the other under the name of visiting children. These concernproblems like enforcement and pause of visitation right, etc.Part two is a comparison study on different regulations and practices ofvisitation system in foreign countries and regions. By contrastive analysis andcomparison of contents and tendency of these systems, some successfulexperiences are summarized to be good practice for China to follow.Part three points out the strong and weak points of the current adoptedvisitation system in China. Further suggestions are proposed responding to thoseweak points. In 2001, it is a great progress in the legislation process that themodification of marriage law adds relative regulations on visitation system. Butstill these regulations are rather general. The subject domain of visitation right israther limited, the reason to a pause of such right is rather vague, and theprotection of children's interests is rather weak. This paper sets the principle ofbest interests of children as the theoretical basis and then brings forward somesuggestions to improve the visitation system in China by referring to thosesuccessful examples of visitation system in foreign countries.