There are three basic arrangements for parental rights and responsibilities: shared, sole, and allocated.

Shared parental rights and responsibilities gives each parent an equal say in most or all of the decisions about the child’s wellbeing.¹ That means parents have to make joint decisions about the major issues of the child’s life, like where the child will live and go to school. Parents who share parental rights and responsibilities have to keep each other informed about events or changes in the child’s life and consult each other, if possible, before making decisions related to raising the child. The child can live with one parent as the primary residence or the child’s residence can be split between both parents. The child’s time spent living at each parent’s house may not be equal.²

Sole parental rights and responsibilities means that one parent has the right to make all the decisions about the child’s wellbeing, and the child’s primary residence will be with that parent.³ The parent who is not granted sole rights and responsibilities still has to help pay for the child’s expenses and could be allowed to visit the child, but s/he is not allowed to make decisions about the child’s wellbeing. The judge will award sole parental rights and responsibilities if s/he believes shared parental rights and responsibilities might be harmful to the child. For example, the judge may award sole parental rights and responsibilities if one of the parents has been abusive.

Allocated parental rights and responsibilities means that the judge assigns each parent the right to make certain decisions about the child’s wellbeing.⁴ For example, one parent may be allowed to make all the decisions regarding the child’s religious upbringing, while the other parent may have the right to decide where the child goes to school. This type of arrangement is not common, but it is a possibility.

¹ M.R.S. 19-A §1501(5)
² M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(2)(D)(1)
³ M.R.S. 19-A § 1501(6)
⁴ M.R.S. 19-A § 1501(1)

If you are not comfortable with the abuser being alone with your child, you might be thinking about asking the judge to order that visits with your child be supervised. If you are already in court because the abuser filed for visitation or custody, you may not have much to lose by asking that the visits be supervised if you can present a valid reason for your request (although this may depend on your situation).

However, if there is no current court case, please get legal advice before you start a court case to ask for supervised visits. We strongly recommend that you talk to an attorney who specializes in custody matters to find out what you would have to prove to get the visits supervised and how long supervised visits would last, based on the facts of your case.

In the majority of cases, supervised visits are only a temporary measure. Although the exact visitation order will vary by state, county, or judge, the judge might order a professional to observe the other parent on a certain amount of visits or the visits might be supervised by a relative for a certain amount of time – and if there are no obvious problems, the visits may likely become unsupervised. Oftentimes, at the end of a case, the other parent ends up with more frequent and/ or longer visits than s/he had before you went into court or even some form of custody.

In some cases, to protect your child from immediate danger by the abuser, starting a case to ask for custody and supervised visits is appropriate. To find out what may be best in your situation, please go to Maine Finding a Lawyer to seek out legal advice.

When making a decision on parental rights and responsibilities, the judge must consider any history of domestic violence or child abuse. The judge must also consider how the domestic violence affects the child emotionally and how it affects the child’s safety.¹

However, a judge can let the child’s primary residence be with the abusive parent or let the abusive parent have visitation if safety measures for the child and abused parent are put in place.² Examples of these safety measures include:

• requiring that the visits be supervised by a counselor, agency, or other responsible adult, with the abusive parent paying any fee;
• ordering that the exchange of the child take place in a protected location, supervised by a responsible adult;
• no overnight visits;
• ordering the abusive parent to go to counseling;
• ordering the abusive parent to not use alcohol or drugs during the visit and for 24 hours before the visit; and
• anything else that would protect the child and abused parent.³

The law is similar for a parent convicted of a child-related sexual offense, as defined by law in section (6-A)(A). The judge can only place the child with that parent or allow contact if the there are safety precautions in place. For certain sex offenses, though, the judge has to assume that no contact with that parent is in the child’s best interests but the parent can try to change the judge’s mind.⁴ Note: If you are worried about your child’s safety because the other parent has committed a child-related sexual offense or had or shared (disseminated) sexually explicit material, you could ask the judge to order a “forensic risk assessment,” which is performed by a licensed clinical social worker, psychologist, or psychiatrist. As part of this assessment, the forensic evaluator could interview both parents and have access to court documents, records of any interview with the child, and other relevant documents.⁵

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(3)(L), (3)(M)
² M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6)(A)
³ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6)(B)
⁴ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6-A)(A), (6-A)(B), (6-A)(C), (6-B)
⁵ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6-C)

If your child was conceived due to nonconsensual removal of a condom or due to tampering with a condom, the judge must take into consideration the following factors when deciding whether to order parent-child contact for the offender:

• whether the nonconsensual removal of or tampering with a condom indicates that there may be safety concerns for the child;
• whether it would be in the best interest of the child for the parent who committed nonconsensual removal of or tampering with a condom to receive any specific counseling or treatment; and
• any effect contact between the parents would have on the parent who was a victim of nonconsensual removal of or tampering with a condom.¹

The judge will include conditions in the order that are appropriate to meet the child’s best interest while minimizing the effect on the parent who experienced nonconsensual removal of or tampering with a condom, such as limiting the contact between the victim and the offender, and limiting or putting specific conditions on parent-child contact, including supervision.¹

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6-D)

A child’s relative or another person can generally only be granted parental rights and responsibilities if the court finds that living with either parent would put the child in danger of serious abuse or neglect as defined by law,¹ or if both parents are dead.

If the child is currently the subject of a child protection hearing where the state is trying to have the child removed from the parents’ care because the child is in danger of harm, a relative can petition the court to be named an “interested person.” The relative would have to have a substantial relationship with the child or a substantial interest in the child’s wellbeing.² A relative who is an “interested person” may be granted parental rights and responsibilities if the court finds that it would be in the child’s best interest to be placed with that relative.³

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(2)(C); M.R.S. 22 § 4002(1), (6)
² M.R.S. 22 § 4005-D(1)(C)
³ M.R.S. 22 § 4005-H(2)(C)

Step 1: File a petition in your local district court
If you are not married to your child’s other parent, you’d file a petition for a parental rights and responsibilities order at your local district court. If you are married, and you want to file for divorce, parental rights and responsibilities will be part of your divorce case¹ Although the form will ask you for your address, if you are afraid of the other parent and don’t want him/her to know your address, you can ask to keep it confidential. Ask the court clerk for more information. To find the courthouse nearest you visit our Maine Courthouse Locations page.

Step 2: Arrange for the other parent to be served with a copy of the petition
After you file in court, the other parent needs to receive legal notice of the petition, which is referred to as “service of process.” You can get detailed instructions on how to properly serve the other parent from the court clerk. You can find more information about service of process in our Preparing for Court – By Yourself section, in the question called What is service of process and how do I accomplish it?

Step 3: Appear in court
Once the other parent has been served with your petition, both of you will attend a case management conference with a family magistrate. A magistrate is similar to a judge, but doesn’t have as much legal authority. The purpose of the conference is to make clear what each parent wants and note what issues the parents agree or disagree on. After the conference, you and the other parent will attend a mediation session.² If you are afraid of the other parent, you can ask to be in a separate room from the other party during the mediation.¹ During mediation, a professional mediator will try to help you and the other parent work through your disagreements and reach a compromise that you can both be happy with. If you are able to reach an agreement on a parental rights and responsibilities arrangement, you will attend a final conference so the family magistrate can review the proposed arrangement and make it into a court order, assuming s/he thinks it’s in your child’s best interests. If you and the other parent cannot reach an agreement at mediation, you will attend a hearing in front of a judge. During the hearing, you and the other parent will both have a chance to present your case to the judge, be represented by lawyers, and the judge will issue a parental rights and responsibilities order.

¹ See Pine Tree Legal Assistance’s website
² M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(11)

Usually, you can file in your child’s home state. The “home state” refers to the state your child has lived in with one or both parents, or a person acting as a parent, for at least the last six months before the date you file. If your child is less than six months old, the “home state” is the state where your child has lived since birth.¹ For example, if you and your child moved to Maine less than six months ago, Maine would not be your child’s home state. You will probably have to file in the state that you and your child lived in before moving to Maine assuming that the other parent still lives there. Another option might be waiting to file in Maine once you and your child have lived in Maine for at least six months. There are legal consequences for both of these options – we suggest talking to a lawyer for advice on what is best for your situation. You can find a lawyer on our Maine Finding a Lawyer page.

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1732(7)

The court can order that the address of you and your child be kept confidential.¹ If you are afraid for your safety if the other parent has your address, make sure you tell this to the court clerk and the judge so that the proper steps can be taken to keep you and your child safe. For example, in addition to keeping your address confidential, the judge can order that you and the other parent exchange the child at a different location than your home.²

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6)(D)
² M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(6)(B)(1)

If the other parent does not follow the court’s order, you can petition the court for a violation/contempt hearing. If the court finds that the other parent has violated the order, the judge can decide that the parent is “in contempt” and can add terms to the order, change the terms to make the order more specific, order make-up visitation if dates were wrongfully missed, or fine the other parent.¹

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(7)

For parents with shared or allocated parental rights and responsibilities, the parent who wants to relocate must give notice to the other parent at least 30 days before the planned relocation. If the relocation must happen in less than 30 days, notice must be given as soon as possible.¹ The notice shall include the address and, if known, the telephone number of the residence where the parent intends to relocate the child.² The only exception to this is if the parent who wants to relocate believes that giving notice would put him/her and the child in danger. In that case, the parent has to notify the court and the court will give appropriate notice to the other parent with the parent’s and child’s safety in mind.¹

After the non-relocating parent receives the notice of intended relocation, s/he can object to the move in court or seek a change in custody based on the intended move. See Can a final order be changed? for more information.

Note: The law isn’t specific about how the notice is supposed to given and delivered to the other parent - the law just says “actual notice” must be given.² We recommend checking with a lawyer in your county who is familiar with custody and relocation matters to get advice on how to make sure the notice is given/delivered properly. Go to our Maine Finding a Lawyer page for legal referrals.

¹ M.R.S. 19-A § 1653(14)
² See FM-140 Schedule of Parental Rights and Responsibilities 9/05

After a final custody order is issued, there may come a time when you and your children move to a different state. For information about how to request to transfer the custody case to a new state, please go to the Transferring a custody case to a different state section in our general Custody page. However, it’s important to keep in mind that you may likely first need to get permission from the court or from the other parent to move your children out of state. Please talk to a lawyer to make sure your plans to move don’t violate your custody order or your state’s parental kidnapping laws.