Long Beach Child Custody and Visitation Attorney serving Long Beach, Torrence, Lakewood, Anaheim, Seal Beach, Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and all of Southern California.

Custody and Visitation

When you separate or divorce, you need to decide who will have “custody” of your children and how they will be taken care of.  You also need to decide on visitation, which means how each parent will spend time with the children.

Moreover, even if you have a custody and visitation order in place, either parent may go back into court and change the order.  This is where having a good attorney is so important. Jarvis & Krieger will provide the experience necessary to achieve the outcome you desire. If you want to change your current visitation order, the parent will have to ask for a court hearing and prove to the judge that there is a change in circumstances, harm to the children or other good reason to change the order.

Contested custody or visitation cases are complicated.  Please call Jarvis & Krieger to see how the law affects you and your rights.


There are two kinds of "custody”:

• Legal custody means who will make the important decisions for your children.  This includes decisions regarding health care, education, and general welfare.  Legal custody can be joint or sole.
• Joint legal custody is where both parents share the responsibility to make decisions about the children.
• Sole is where only one parent has that responsibility.

• school or childcare
• religion
• mental health counseling or therapy needs
• medical needs
• sports, summer camp, vacation, or extracurricular activities
• travel
• where to live

• Physical custody means where your children will live. This can also be joint or sole. Joint, which means that the children live with both parents. Sole or primary, means the children live with one parent most of the time and usually visit the other parent. 

At Jarvis & Krieger we will aggressively fight for you and try to establish the legal and physical custody situation you desire.  Although the judge makes the final decision about custody and visitation, a good attorney will ensure your rights are properly represented.

You also have to deal with visitation – which is how the parents will share their time with their children.

What are visitation orders?

• Visitation:  This is for the parent who does not have the children more than 50% of the time.  Generally, parents and children need detailed visitation plans to prevent conflicts and confusion. 

• Supervised Visitation: When the children's safety and well-being require that visits with the other parent be supervised by you, another adult, or a professional agency.

• No Visitation: This option is used in situations when visiting with the parent, even with supervision, would be harmful to the children. Here, it is not in the best interest of the child for the parent to have contact with the child.

The attorneys at Jarvis & Krieger know how to get the results you want.  For example, if you believe the other parent presents a danger to your child, you may go into court and ask for supervised visitation when your child sees that parent.  Or if you only see your child a small percentage of the time and you want to step-up the percentage of your visitation, you may ask a court to do that.  Even if you now seek to switch physical custody from one parent to the other, it can be done and the attorneys at Jarvis & Krieger can get it done.  Please give us a call today to see how we can help.

The Law Offices of Jarvis & Krieger serve Long Beach, Torrence, Lakewood, Anaheim, Seal Beach and all of Orange County.