NJSBA Family Law Section

I received an order on a post judgment that temporarily modified my client's parenting time from "shared" to 4 hours one day per week until the children's personal therapist releases a report at the end of February as to the status of therapy. The records will be reviewed by the court in camera, and not necessarily released to counsel. Afterward, the court will schedule a conference.

My client's significant other and family are not allowed to be present during his visitation.  No allegations of abuse or neglect were made or that my client is even a bad father. No finding of unfitness.  The therapist has refused to allow my client to participate in therapy or even talk to him.  The therapist has been the children's longtime personal therapist. 

Mind you, my client has not seen his kids since July when the kids (9 and 12 at the time) allegedly decided they did not want to see him anymore based on a DV incident that occurred nearly 7 months prior in front of them between my client's brother and his wife.  My client was not even there when the incident occurred. So, once his parenting time was cut off, he filed an OTSC immediately. The OTSC was denied, then he immediately filed a motion, which was not heard until this month.

The court also ordered a blanket restriction against my client's "immediate family and friends" (basically those words) from disparaging the other party on any social networking site.  The evidence before the court was that my client's significant other posted angry posts (concerning the denial of parenting time) about the other party on father's rights Facebook pages.

I really want to appeal the order, for many reasons.  However, my concern is that the judge said his order, reducing parenting time to 4 hours once per week, is temporary.  I think I'm stuck on doing the appeal since the order is not final, but am I?

I think the blanket restriction on unnamed parties will be a fun appeal.

My other big concern is also over the process implemented by the court (no plenary hearing), and then a basic abdication of its judicial decision making role to a private therapist (whose is not even an expert and who doesn't involve my client) without guaranteed opportunity for me to review the "report."

The appeal will likely be pro bono so any help is much appreciated.

Sounds like a holy mess on many legal and social levels. If I were in this situation, I would get a bona fide custody expert to write a very short generic certification. framed hypothetically using the child-related facts of your case, and stating that this ungainly situation could cause irreparable harm and/or be inimical to the best interest of any children so situated. I've have done this successfully years ago on reconsideration of a rejected emergent interlocutory appeal.

Second, it is as if the Court is delegating, in a sense, judicial responsibility despite PT v. MS.

Third, should this "report" digress from a simple status statement and into anything forensic, then you have a role conflict. But, if you're not allowed to see the content of the report, you would never know whether this violation occurred.

A mess. Good luck.