Divorce / visiting rights

Taiwan Parenting
1

TW wife and me both agreeing we officially share child-custody and taking both care about the financial thing.
We still live together, but at the end our daughter will stay with mummy.
Based at the fact that we finally have a mutual divorce and we ourselves find a settlement, I however do
wonder what the taiwanese law says about visiting-rights.
My original idea was (ok, stupid, but anyway) to see her as often as I want (of course based on normal-daytimes),
but my wife’s view is on the contrary, as she wantsto restrict me, my visting times to a level, which so far
is beyond being acceptable for me.
Based on some horror-stories I read on other threads, what (how often) seems to be normal here in Taiwan,
is there any written law about that ?
Or is it totally up to the parents to find out a solution ?

And if we have such a solution, of course it has to be written down and to be signed, maybe signed by 1
or more witness - however would it be advisable to get such document locally notarized too ?

Thank you for helpful replies.

2

For all the experiences I read on Forumosa, I would think your best solution, in order to see your daughter as often as you want, would be to maintain a good relationship with the mother.

The law might be there to reinforce your statut as a dad, but when needed, it seems to be another story.

Be a sweet ex-husband with a stable income to provide your daughter and your ex might never give you any trouble.

3

How often do you want to see your daughter?
(as often as possible?)

How often does your wife think you could see her?
(as less as possible?)

4

[quote=“MoTi”]TW wife and me both agreeing we officially share child-custody and taking both care about the financial thing.
We still live together, but at the end our daughter will stay with mummy.
Based at the fact that we finally have a mutual divorce and we ourselves find a settlement, I however do
wonder what the taiwanese law says about visiting-rights.
My original idea was (ok, stupid, but anyway) to see her as often as I want (of course based on normal-daytimes),
but my wife’s view is on the contrary, as she wantsto restrict me, my visting times to a level, which so far
is beyond being acceptable for me.
Based on some horror-stories I read on other threads, what (how often) seems to be normal here in Taiwan,
is there any written law about that ?
Or is it totally up to the parents to find out a solution ?

And if we have such a solution, of course it has to be written down and to be signed, maybe signed by 1
or more witness - however would it be advisable to get such document locally notarized too ?

Thank you for helpful replies.[/quote]

Just don’t agree to the divorce unless you get the visitation schedule you want. Unless you agree, the divorce will not come through anyways unless you have committed adultery.

5

Yes, adultery is illegal in Taiwan.

6

Yes, adultery is illegal in Taiwan.[/quote]

Not only that, but also one of the few statutory ground for divorce without consent of the offending spouse.

7

How often do you want to see your daughter?
(as often as possible?)

How often does your wife think you could see her?
(as less as possible?)

As I will live “nearby” my initial intention was anytime (at daytime).
But I admit, thats impossible, so I thought around every 3 days.
She suggested once every 2nd weekend.
I guess we will meet in the middle, thus every weekend 1 (full) day.
Sounds reasonable, however still so sad …

Again, such agreement, is it worth to get notarized or is a simple
written statement with signatures, with witnesses, enough (in case …) ?

8

[quote=“MoTi”]How often do you want to see your daughter?
(as often as possible?)

How often does your wife think you could see her?
(as less as possible?)

As I will live “nearby” my initial intention was anytime (at daytime).
But I admit, thats impossible, so I thought around every 3 days.
She suggested once every 2nd weekend.
I guess we will meet in the middle, thus every weekend 1 (full) day.
Sounds reasonable, however still so sad …

Again, such agreement, is it worth to get notarized or is a simple
written statement with signatures, with witnesses, enough (in case …) ?[/quote]

Once every other weekend was what the court allowed me, of course my ex had no intention of letting me see him at all because she knew the court would never enforce it.

Have you actually divorced yet ? If not, then don’t until she has agreed, in writing, to the terms that you seem fair. What’s wrong with seeing your child during the week if you live nearby ? Don’t be aggressive or confrontational with your ex, that will make things worse, but make it clear to her that it is best for your child if she sees as much of both parents as possible, and if she does not agree then you will not divorce. You said you have agreed to joint custody- but you haven’t at all- only that both of you share the financial burden. Once divorced and your child is living with her, she will hold all the cards. She can decide at any time to stop you seeing your child. It happens.

The courts will never enforce any agreement that you have by the way, but at least it gives you the moral high ground should she decide to start playing nasty with you.

9

It is possible to enforce visitation rights but can be costly and time consuming. One way to make it easier is to make sure that your divorce agreement clearly sets out the visitation rights with as much specificity as possible (frequency, time, place, duty to notify if you move etc).

If one parent breaches the visitation agreement, the other parent can file an action to get court order for visitation at a certain time and place. You take this order to the court’s department of civil enforcement and court personnel go with you along with the police to enforce it. Failure to comply will result in a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$300,000 or detention (unlikely in practice). This is fairly technical process and would be difficult to do without a lawyer. You do need to know where the child lives. It might need to be done several times and is costly. But it can be done and Taiwanese parents successfully do it with some frequency.

TheLegal Aid Foundation can refer you to a lawyer who can help or maybe even provide subsidized legal services (most foreigners will earn too much money to meet the income test). I strongly suggest going in person to make an appointment for further counseling.

Here is the Taipei office’'s info

Add：6F., No.200, Sec. 2, Jinshan S. Rd., Da-an District, TaipeiCity 106, Taiwan
Tel：(02)2322-5151
Fax：(02)2322-2051
E-mail：taipei@laf.org.tw
Service Hours：
Monday~Friday AM9:00~12:30 PM1:30~18:00
Saturday AM9:00~11:00 (legal consultation is provided)

Nighttime service available in every Tuesday and Thursday until 20:00

 	Interview Hours：

For general cases:

Monday ~ Friday AM9:00~12:00 PM2:00~5:00
Tuesday PM 6:00~9:00

For debt clearance cases:

Tuesday PM 2:00~5:00

[quote=“pgdaddy1”][quote=“MoTi”]How often do you want to see your daughter?
(as often as possible?)

How often does your wife think you could see her?
(as less as possible?)

As I will live “nearby” my initial intention was anytime (at daytime).
But I admit, thats impossible, so I thought around every 3 days.
She suggested once every 2nd weekend.
I guess we will meet in the middle, thus every weekend 1 (full) day.
Sounds reasonable, however still so sad …

Again, such agreement, is it worth to get notarized or is a simple
written statement with signatures, with witnesses, enough (in case …) ?[/quote]

Once every other weekend was what the court allowed me, of course my ex had no intention of letting me see him at all because she knew the court would never enforce it.

Have you actually divorced yet ? If not, then don’t until she has agreed, in writing, to the terms that you seem fair. What’s wrong with seeing your child during the week if you live nearby ? Don’t be aggressive or confrontational with your ex, that will make things worse, but make it clear to her that it is best for your child if she sees as much of both parents as possible, and if she does not agree then you will not divorce. You said you have agreed to joint custody- but you haven’t at all- only that both of you share the financial burden. Once divorced and your child is living with her, she will hold all the cards. She can decide at any time to stop you seeing your child. It happens.

The courts will never enforce any agreement that you have by the way, but at least it gives you the moral high ground should she decide to start playing nasty with you.[/quote]

10

[quote=“Feiren”]It is possible to enforce visitation rights but can be costly and time consuming. One way to make it easier is to make sure that your divorce agreement clearly sets out the visitation rights with as much specificity as possible (frequency, time, place, duty to notify if you move etc).

If one parent breaches the visitation agreement, the other parent can file an action to get court order for visitation at a certain time and place. You take this order to the court’s department of civil enforcement and court personnel go with you along with the police to enforce it. Failure to comply will result in a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$300,000 or detention (unlikely in practice). This is fairly technical process and would be difficult to do without a lawyer. You do need to know where the child lives. It might need to be done several times and is costly. But it can be done and Taiwanese parents successfully do it with some frequency.

[/quote]

I can’t comment about how successfully Taiwanese parents enforce visiting rights, but here’s a few more notes on what happened in my case:

  • After a year of being denied access to our child and me commencing legal proceedings, the court finally agreed to enforce my interim (i.e. before the divorce was final) visitation rights.
  • As the working hours of the enforcement officials were only 9 to 5 on a weekday, which is really limiting if you think about it, the court official went to my ex’s house first on a weekday morning, to find out, obviously, that neither she or our child were there.
  • They then went to her office. The police were called to assist (and for this demanded payment from me direct- i.e. a bribe). When she saw them coming, my ex went to lock herself herself in a room. My ex’s boss screamed at the court official and actually physically forced him into a side room. Some coworkers filmed the whole procedure.
  • Finally my ex was persuaded to come out and answer questions. She refused to say where our child was, or to respect the visitation rights.
  • The court official told her that criminal action would/ could be taken against her, such as detention.
  • Myself and my lawyers were then asked to leave the office while the court official talked to my ex’s boss. My lawyer told me that he thought they were apologising to her boss for causing the inconvenience.
  • The police did nothing at all.
  • The result of the whole thing was nothing- my ex continued to ignore visitation orders. She was issued a 40-50k fine and no criminal action was taken, I have no idea if she paid it or whether it was enforced by the court via deduction from her salary. Regarding repeated fines- my lawyer told me that we would need to carry out a full legal procedure every time for this.
  • Even though she had fragrantly disobeyed court orders, my ex was subsequently given full custody, with extremely limited visitation rights for me.
  • Total legal costs to get to that stage around 22k USD.
  • I have no idea whether my final visitation rights would have been enforceable as I made the decision to leave Taiwan and the rest, as they say, is history.

Five years on now. It was a traumatic time. Having our son actually snatched from me with the help of some thugs that she hired is something that is going to stay with me for the rest of my life, especially as it was the last time I actually saw him in freedom. The whole experience pushed me to the edge and almost over it. Although I was by no means blameless for the whole situation, I was expecting some fairness and compassion from the court. Perhaps the worst thing was that the court gave me hope, but finally it appeared just to be making a show.

Did the fact that I am a foreigner count against me in court ? I am not in a position to say that, with a sample size of one. But one thing that I did gather is that my wife was successful partially because she did things the “Taiwanese way” i.e. which included legal aggression towards me to threaten me and effectively force me out of the country- a lawsuit of the “insultment” kind and one for going into her e-mail- which potentially could have put me in prison.

11

[quote=“pgdaddy1”][quote=“Feiren”]It is possible to enforce visitation rights but can be costly and time consuming. One way to make it easier is to make sure that your divorce agreement clearly sets out the visitation rights with as much specificity as possible (frequency, time, place, duty to notify if you move etc).

If one parent breaches the visitation agreement, the other parent can file an action to get court order for visitation at a certain time and place. You take this order to the court’s department of civil enforcement and court personnel go with you along with the police to enforce it. Failure to comply will result in a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$300,000 or detention (unlikely in practice). This is fairly technical process and would be difficult to do without a lawyer. You do need to know where the child lives. It might need to be done several times and is costly. But it can be done and Taiwanese parents successfully do it with some frequency.

[/quote]

I can’t comment about how successfully Taiwanese parents enforce visiting rights, but here’s a few more notes on what happened in my case:

  • After a year of being denied access to our child and me commencing legal proceedings, the court finally agreed to enforce my interim (i.e. before the divorce was final) visitation rights.
  • As the working hours of the enforcement officials were only 9 to 5 on a weekday, which is really limiting if you think about it, the court official went to my ex’s house first on a weekday morning, to find out, obviously, that neither she or our child were there.
  • They then went to her office. The police were called to assist (and for this demanded payment from me direct- i.e. a bribe). When she saw them coming, my ex went to lock herself herself in a room. My ex’s boss screamed at the court official and actually physically forced him into a side room. Some coworkers filmed the whole procedure.
  • Finally my ex was persuaded to come out and answer questions. She refused to say where our child was, or to respect the visitation rights.
  • The court official told her that criminal action would/ could be taken against her, such as detention.
  • Myself and my lawyers were then asked to leave the office while the court official talked to my ex’s boss. My lawyer told me that he thought they were apologising to her boss for causing the inconvenience.
  • The police did nothing at all.
  • The result of the whole thing was nothing- my ex continued to ignore visitation orders. She was issued a 40-50k fine and no criminal action was taken, I have no idea if she paid it or whether it was enforced by the court via deduction from her salary. Regarding repeated fines- my lawyer told me that we would need to carry out a full legal procedure every time for this.
  • Even though she had fragrantly disobeyed court orders, my ex was subsequently given full custody, with extremely limited visitation rights for me.
  • Total legal costs to get to that stage around 22k USD.
  • I have no idea whether my final visitation rights would have been enforceable as I made the decision to leave Taiwan and the rest, as they say, is history.

Five years on now. It was a traumatic time. Having our son actually snatched from me with the help of some thugs that she hired is something that is going to stay with me for the rest of my life, especially as it was the last time I actually saw him in freedom. The whole experience pushed me to the edge and almost over it. Although I was by no means blameless for the whole situation, I was expecting some fairness and compassion from the court. Perhaps the worst thing was that the court gave me hope, but finally it appeared just to be making a show.

Did the fact that I am a foreigner count against me in court ? I am not in a position to say that, with a sample size of one. But one thing that I did gather is that my wife was successful partially because she did things the “Taiwanese way” i.e. which included legal aggression towards me to threaten me and effectively force me out of the country- a lawsuit of the “insultment” kind and one for going into her e-mail- which potentially could have put me in prison.[/quote]

Being a foreigner was clearly a disfavor in your case.

In Asia, it is often the dad who gets custody in case of a divorce.

12

No it’s not! At least in Taiwan, it isn’t.