Virtual Families

Virtual Visitation Emerges As Controversial New Trend

"Virtual Visitation IDEAL for Separated Families," declared one newspaper headline. “Internet Solves Family Disputes,” declared another.

Other articles offered starkly contrasting perspectives: "Virtual Visitation Deprives Dads," declared another. "Bad Idea, Poll Finds," according to an instant MSNBC web site poll. "A callous substitute" for face-to-face interactions, a newspaper editorial opined.

In 2001, a number of cases of “virtual visitation” began to surface in the U.S. media. Tom Harrison, publisher of Lawyers Weekly USA, observed that virtual visitation is the "cutting edge of divorce law" and predicted it would "become accepted and possibly even commonplace over the next few years."
The emergence of “virtual visitation” struck me as a symbol of our age. So what if Dad and Mom couldn’t live together anymore? Dad could move to California, Mom to Maine. With cell phones, email, instant messaging, voice-enabled messaging, chat rooms, digital cameras, Internet phone, web cams, net meetings, pagers, fax machines, and even occasionally old-fashioned telephone, the kids could still have easy access to both parents; spend winters with Mom, summers with Dad or vice versa, and have the benefits of both worlds.

The fact that courts were embracing this concept provided, perhaps, a commentary on the state of the American family in the 21st Century. Clearly it was one more example of America's longstanding faith that there is a technological answer to every problem.

To traditionalists, this faith in technology is appalling. The most essential, soulful relationships of life -- between parents and children – are being reduced to communication by computer, a soul-less medium that cannot easily convey the physical spirit of a person. The lives of children are greatly diminished, they argue, when routine physical contact with one parent is lost.

The early “virtual visitation” court cases sparked a fierce public debate over the pros and cons of using technology to maintain connections between parents and children in the event of divorce. Without much real data or in-depth anecdotes to base opinions on, the arguments on both sides struck me as visceral, generating as much heat as light.

Family law attorneys were quoted as saying they would tell clients who wished to move away to propose Internet visitation between the other parent and the child(ren) as a substitute for face-to-face visitation. In tough custody cases, they speculated, judges would be more likely to allow move-aways, and would impose “virtual visitation” as the Solomon-like solution to the problem.

This prospect elicited a blistering critique of “virtual parenting.” Brock Meeks, a columnist for MSNBC, launched this salvo: “It’s bad enough that our culture and courts psychologically castrate divorced fathers before the ink dries on the divorce papers. Now misguided, pseudo-feminist child advocates are playing the metaphorical Lorena Bobbitt by claiming that Web-based technologies are an acceptable proxy for a father’s physical visitation rights. Just shoot me now.

“CHILD CUSTODY BATTLES were never pretty. Now they’re getting uglier, thanks to a new wrinkle in so-called ‘move away’ cases. These are mostly selfish scenarios in which a mother throws the divorce-roiled world of her kids into more turmoil by uprooting them and moving out of state and away from their father. Fathers, naturally, have fought such ‘move away’ requests, knowing it will mean more expense, more hassle and less time with their kids….

“The courts have, until now, set the bar fairly high when trying to rule on move away cases. The Internet is changing all that and changing it for the worse….A family law attorney told the AP that while it’s true you ‘can’t hug a computer,” it is possible to ‘maintain a very close continual relationship with a child.’

“This begs the question: How the hell does this lawyer define ‘continual’ and ‘very close’? Because from where I sit, turning a father into some twisted digital ‘Max Headroom Knows Best’ isn’t conducive to quality parenting.

“It’s tough enough cultivating a ‘continual relationship’ with your kids when they live under your own roof. Anyone who believes you can get a teenager to log on at a pre-arranged time once a week let alone once a day is living in fantasyland or truly believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

“There is absolutely no way that e-mail or Webcams can replace face-to-face, in-person communication.

“I’ve done the long-distance dad routine for more than a decade now. Long before ‘virtual visitation’ was being used to bludgeon fathers in court, I set up an America Online account for my three kids who were moved, without my consent, from San Diego to Washington State. But the AOL account was merely to augment our telephone calls.

"As easy as the phone is to use, even that antique technology became a chore for my kids; getting them to use e-mail was only slightly less trouble than getting an audience with the pope.
Moreover, using the Internet as a tool to justify further distancing divorced fathers from their children borders on the sadistic.

“’When men are not needed to protect, they tend to transfer their affections elsewhere,’” writes Bill Brazell, a columnist for TheGuyCode Web site. “’And the courts nearly ensure that men will detach from their children, by repeatedly giving mothers sole custody, or giving fathers ‘visitation’ rights that make them feel like prisoners of the mother’s schedule.”

“’And once men are so removed from their children’s lives “they detach themselves emotionally and financially,” Brazell writes, with the media falsely clumping all such men into the ‘deadbeat dads’ category. This particular column of Brazell’s is written from the margin notes he made while reading Warren Farrell’s book “Father and Child Reunion.”

“Taking the mindless, detached tools of digital communication and using them to prop up the “Mom’s are best for the kids” mystique is unacceptable,” Meeks continued. “Such lunacy is honed to a razor’s edge when Brazell lays out some startling facts about dear old single Mum with the cool detachment of a county coroner reeling off the gruesome details of a John Doe autopsy:

"Single moms are more likely than single dads to use physical punishment.

"Two-thirds of mothers acknowledge hitting children who are under six years of age three or more times per week.

"Children are 88 percent more likely to be seriously injured from child abuse or neglect by their mothers than by their fathers.

"Almost two-thirds of the parents who kill their children are mothers.

"So here’s my idea for a bumper sticker: Save a kid — make more long-distance Moms. And don’t worry, Mom, I’m quite sure Dad will kick in for the Webcam rig. The check’s in the mail,” Meeks concluded.

Internet discussion groups were crowded with passionate rants on the subject. Typical was this comment posted to an Internet discussion group by Powernapper.

“I am alarmed that anyone would consider an on-line chat or video-conferencing to be anything but a frustrating and hopeless effort at achieving intimacy. I also suspect it will be a club used once again by one parent against the other. ‘Sure dear. Send little Johnny an email.’ What the hell has this internet thing become that we even think for a minute it is a substitute for a real, loving flesh and blood mommy or daddy. Have we all gone crazy?”

“The Internet can't attend ballgames, tuck a child in bed, give a hug, or look the child in the eye and genuinely say, ‘I love you,’ “ wrote Devanbp. “But, then again in a society where daycare is the norm, who has time to be a real parent anyway. It's bad enough that ‘parents’ are self-centered enough to choose divorce in the first place and that visitation is even an issue, but to even consider online communication as visitation in the sense of being a parent to a child is the equivalent of saying Bill Clinton was a man of character and integrity.”

Another attack on the concept came from Glenn Sacks, a newspaper columnist who claims to “write about gender issues from the male perspective,” and Dianna Thompson, founder and Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. In a jointly bylined article, they called “virtual visitation” a “new and dangerous trend in family law - judges permitting mothers to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers and justifying the separation by ordering Internet video conferencing as a purported substitute for a father's time with his children.”

”Hundreds of thousands of divorced dads…are victims of ‘move-away moms’ who either do not value their children's relationships with their fathers, place their own needs above those of their children, or use geography as a method of driving fathers out of their children's lives. The misplaced use of virtual visitation as a rationalization for the troubled consciences of both move-away moms and family court judges will exacerbate the problem.”

”Today many divorced dads endure the heartache of being told that they cannot see their children because they always have ‘dentist appointments’ or ‘birthday parties to attend’ during their scheduled visitation times. In the era of virtual visitation, there will be an inordinately large number of technical problems with custodial parents' Web cameras, and the repair shops will be operating at an unusually slow pace.

”When such interference occurs, divorced dads' only recourse will be to scrape together the money to go back to court. However, it is doubtful that many judges will be willing to hold a mother in contempt of court for not fixing her computer.”

Characterizing “virtual visitation” as Orwellian, Sacks and Thompson quote a divorced dad saying: "I want to hug my children, not wave to them through a computer screen. Virtual visitation sounds a lot like visiting from the inside of a jail cell. No, in a jail cell you can stick your arm out between the bars and hold your child's hand. A virtual dad can't even do that."

Debate Rages Over Virtual Visitation

The early “virtual visitation” court cases sparked a fierce public debate over the pros and cons of using technology to maintain connections between parents and children in the event of divorce. Without much real data or in-depth anecdotes to base opinions on, the arguments on both sides struck me as visceral, generating as much heat as light.

Family law attorneys were quoted as saying they would tell clients who wished to move away to propose Internet visitation between the other parent and the child(ren) as a substitute for face-to-face visitation. In tough custody cases, they speculated, judges would be more likely to allow move-aways, and would impose “virtual visitation” as the Solomon-like solution to the problem.

This prospect elicited a blistering critique of “virtual parenting.” Brock Meeks, a columnist for MSNBC, launched this salvo: “It’s bad enough that our culture and courts psychologically castrate divorced fathers before the ink dries on the divorce papers. Now misguided, pseudo-feminist child advocates are playing the metaphorical Lorena Bobbitt by claiming that Web-based technologies are an acceptable proxy for a father’s physical visitation rights. Just shoot me now.

“CHILD CUSTODY BATTLES were never pretty. Now they’re getting uglier, thanks to a new wrinkle in so-called ‘move away’ cases. These are mostly selfish scenarios in which a mother throws the divorce-roiled world of her kids into more turmoil by uprooting them and moving out of state and away from their father. Fathers, naturally, have fought such ‘move away’ requests, knowing it will mean more expense, more hassle and less time with their kids….

“The courts have, until now, set the bar fairly high when trying to rule on move away cases. The Internet is changing all that and changing it for the worse….A family law attorney told the AP that while it’s true you ‘can’t hug a computer,” it is possible to ‘maintain a very close continual relationship with a child.’
“This begs the question: How the hell does this lawyer define ‘continual’ and ‘very close’? Because from where I sit, turning a father into some twisted digital ‘Max Headroom Knows Best’ isn’t conducive to quality parenting.
“It’s tough enough cultivating a ‘continual relationship’ with your kids when they live under your own roof. Anyone who believes you can get a teenager to log on at a pre-arranged time once a week let alone once a day is living in fantasyland or truly believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
“There is absolutely no way that e-mail or Webcams can replace face-to-face, in-person communication.
“I’ve done the long-distance dad routine for more than a decade now. Long before ‘virtual visitation’ was being used to bludgeon fathers in court, I set up an America Online account for my three kids who were moved, without my consent, from San Diego to Washington State. But the AOL account was merely to augment our telephone calls.
“As easy as the phone is to use, even that antique technology became a chore for my kids; getting them to use e-mail was only slightly less trouble than getting an audience with the pope.
Moreover, using the Internet as a tool to justify further distancing divorced fathers from their children borders on the sadistic.
“’When men are not needed to protect, they tend to transfer their affections elsewhere,’” writes Bill Brazell, a columnist for TheGuyCode Web site. “’And the courts nearly ensure that men will detach from their children, by repeatedly giving mothers sole custody, or giving fathers ‘visitation’ rights that make them feel like prisoners of the mother’s schedule.”
“’And once men are so removed from their children’s lives “they detach themselves emotionally and financially,” Brazell writes, with the media falsely clumping all such men into the ‘deadbeat dads’ category. This particular column of Brazell’s is written from the margin notes he made while reading Warren Farrell’s book “Father and Child Reunion.”
“Taking the mindless, detached tools of digital communication and using them to prop up the “Mom’s are best for the kids” mystique is unacceptable,” Meeks continued. “Such lunacy is honed to a razor’s edge when Brazell lays out some startling facts about dear old single Mum with the cool detachment of a county coroner reeling off the gruesome details of a John Doe autopsy:
Single moms are more likely than single dads to use physical punishment.
Two-thirds of mothers acknowledge hitting children who are under six years of age three or more times per week.
Children are 88 percent more likely to be seriously injured from child abuse or neglect by their mothers than by their fathers.
Almost two-thirds of the parents who kill their children are mothers.
So here’s my idea for a bumper sticker: Save a kid — make more long-distance Moms. And don’t worry, Mom, I’m quite sure Dad will kick in for the Webcam rig. The check’s in the mail,” Meeks concluded.

Internet discussion groups were crowded with passionate rants on the subject. Typical was this comment posted to an Internet discussion group by Powernapper. “I am alarmed that anyone would consider an on-line chat or video-conferencing to be anything but a frustrating and hopeless effort at achieving intimacy. I also suspect it will be a club used once again by one parent against the other. ‘Sure dear. Send little Johnny an email.’ What the hell has this internet thing become that we even think for a minute it is a substitute for a real, loving flesh and blood mommy or daddy. Have we all gone crazy?”

“The Internet can't attend ballgames, tuck a child in bed, give a hug, or look the child in the eye and genuinely say, ‘I love you,’ “ wrote Devanbp. “But, then again in a society where daycare is the norm, who has time to be a real parent anyway. It's bad enough that ‘parents’ are self-centered enough to choose divorce in the first place and that visitation is even an issue, but to even consider online communication as visitation in the sense of being a parent to a child is the equivalent of saying Bill Clinton was a man of character and integrity.”

Another attack on the concept came from Glenn Sacks, a newspaper columnist who claims to “write about gender issues from the male perspective,” and Dianna Thompson, founder and Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. In a jointly bylined article, they called “virtual visitation” a “new and dangerous trend in family law - judges permitting mothers to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers and justifying the separation by ordering Internet video conferencing as a purported substitute for a father's time with his children.”

”Hundreds of thousands of divorced dads…are victims of ‘move-away moms’ who either do not value their children's relationships with their fathers, place their own needs above those of their children, or use geography as a method of driving fathers out of their children's lives. The misplaced use of virtual visitation as a rationalization for the troubled consciences of both move-away moms and family court judges will exacerbate the problem.”

”Today many divorced dads endure the heartache of being told that they cannot see their children because they always have ‘dentist appointments’ or ‘birthday parties to attend’ during their scheduled visitation times. In the era of virtual visitation, there will be an inordinately large number of technical problems with custodial parents' Web cameras, and the repair shops will be operating at an unusually slow pace.

”When such interference occurs, divorced dads' only recourse will be to scrape together the money to go back to court. However, it is doubtful that many judges will be willing to hold a mother in contempt of court for not fixing her computer.”

Characterizing “virtual visitation” as Orwellian, Sacks and Thompson quote a divorced dad saying: "I want to hug my children, not wave to them through a computer screen. Virtual visitation sounds a lot like visiting from the inside of a jail cell. No, in a jail cell you can stick your arm out between the bars and hold your child's hand. A virtual dad can't even do that."

New Jersey, 2001: McCoy V. McCoy

What sparked the initial “trend story” was the language of a New Jersey state appeals court. “Creative and innovative” were the words the court used to describe a mother’s proposal to move her nine-year-old daughter with her to California and let the child communicate daily with her father by e-mail and web camera.

Offered a permanent job for higher pay with health benefits in California, Kyron Henn-Lee asked the court to allow her to take her daughter Katherine with her. She would create a web site, install high-speed Internet access, and set up a web camera so her daughter could communicate with her father, Thomas McCoy, every day, she promised. Her daughter would spend as many overnights at her father’s house as she did before the move – the father’s time would simply be in larger blocks during summer months.

Thomas McCoy opposed the move, contending that it would damage his relationship with his daughter, and that the move was not in the child’s best interests. 

The first court Henn-Lee appeared before did not grant her the right to move. But she appealed the case, and in early 2001, the NJ Appeals Court reversed the trial court decision, and ordered the lower court to reconsider its decision based on the offer of “virtual visitation.”

Whenever a custodial parent moves to a distant location, the ability of the non-custodial parent to exercise visitation is always adversely affected, the Appeals Court acknowledged. But that fact alone may not be contrary to the best interest of the child, so long as an alternate visitation schedule can be created that continues and preserves the relationship between the child and the non-custodial parent.

Declared the Appellate Court: “We believe that the mother’s suggested use of the Internet to enhance visitation was both creative and innovative. In dismissing that suggested use, the trial court never focused on the actual alternative visitation schedule proposed by the mother and whether it was comparable to the father’s current schedule or inimical to the best interest of the child.” Henn-Lee’s proposal deserved serious consideration, it ruled. 

The crux of the Appeals Court’s decision appeared to be the fact that the father would have the same or a greater number of total days with the child, considering time during summer vacations and holidays. The internet would be used to supplement visitation, not as a substitute for it.

By the time of the Appeals Court decision, however, Henn-Lee had decided not to move to California, apparently determining that she could survive financially in the region where her ex-husband lived so that he could continue to engage in co-parenting.

Text of Case: http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/decisions/appellate/a6868-98.opn.html

In Tennessee, Virtual Visitation Approved for 'Run of the Mill' Custody Dispute

The parents lived only 70 miles from each other in Tennessee, and shared custody. In Dec. 1999, the trial court granted split custody, with Mr. Burke as primary custodian. The husband in the case was a computer professional. He volunteered to personally install Internet equipment in his ex-wife's home and train her in its use. His ex-wife objected, claiming such a connection would violate her privacy.

Both the trial court and the Tennessee Court of Appeals agreed in 2001 agreed with the father. “We agree with the trial court that Mr. Burke's proposal of internet-based communications is a ‘unique, forward thinking and viable communication alternative,’” the Appeals Court wrote. “Furthermore, this ‘unique’ alternative will give both parents the opportunity not only to speak to the children,
but to see them as well.”

The court ordered both parties to install Internet communications systems. “An Internet-based video communications system should be installed in Ms. Burke’s home at Mr. Burke’s expense…[and] each parent should be entitled to initiate three telephone conversations or Internet-based communications with the children each week at reasonable times.” In addition, the children could initiate contact with the other parent “whenever the children desire” for “a reasonable duration.”

Ms. Burke appealed, arguing against shared custody, and saying the court erred in ordering that her ex-husband be allowed to install an Internet communications system on her home computer. She contended it would violate her privacy. Her ex-husband might gain access to protected files and passwords on her computer, she said. The appeals court conceded this could be a problem: “The court is concerned that additional unwarranted conflict between the parents could occur provided Mr. Burke is allowed to install and provide instruction concerning the Internet-based communications system to Ms. Burke.” The court ordered an independent third party to install the system and provide training, with the husband paying the bill, and for any maintenance or upgrade costs associated with the web-cam connection.

The court approved a plan whereby the father could contact the children via the Internet three times a week. The children, at the time in pre-school and grade school, could contact the father via the Internet "whenever the children desire."

Internet visitation was in addition to physical visitation on alternate weekends and holidays and for two months during the summer. "It's just like telephone access," said the mother's attorney, Michael Binkley of Nashville.

The court also instructed Mr. and Ms. Burke to adopt the logic of Judge Michael Haas of Walker, Minnesota when raising children of divorce. Wrote Judge Haas: "Your children have come into this world because of the two of you. Perhaps you two made lousy choices as to who you decided to be the other parent. If so, that is YOUR problem and YOUR fault.

"No matter what you think of the other party - or what your family thinks of the other party - those children are one half of each of you. Remember that, because every time you tell your child what an idiot his father is, or what a fool his mother is, or how bad the absent parent is, or what terrible things that person has done, you are telling the child that half of HIM/HER is bad.

"That is an unforgivable thing to do to a child. That is not love; it is possession. If you do that to your children, you will destroy them as surely as if you had cut them into pieces, because that is what you are doing to their emotions.

"I sincerely hope you don't do that to your children. Think more about your children and less of yourselves, and make yours a selfless kind of love, not foolish or selfish, or THEY will suffer." (Tennessee Court of Appeals. Burke v. Burke, No. M2000-01111-COA-R3-CV. Aug. 7, 2001. Lawyers Weekly USA No. 9921543.)

Dad in Florida, Daughters in California, Communicating by Web Camera

Several nights a week, from his home in Gainesville, Florida, Jeff Dwyer connected by web cam for half-hour Internet sessions with one of his two daughters, who lived with his ex-wife in a small town on the edge of the Mohave Desert in California.

Though the web cam connections seemed short – the half-hour limit was imposed by his ex-wife – Dwyer felt he saw his girls "as much as a father who lives in the same town. I interact with them more than most dads, talking to them nearly every day over the Internet."

After the breakup of his marriage, Dwyer moved to Gainesville to direct the University of Florida’s Institute on Aging. But he still managed to see his girls, who were 10 and 6 in 2001, about every six weeks, and for blocks of time in the summer. He frequently drove two hours from Los Angeles to pick up his daughters, or to visit their school for a conference with teachers.

Though he was willing to pay for the high-end web cam connection for the girls himself, he had to go court to get it installed. Concerned that the equipment might invade her privacy or distract the girls from their schoolwork, his ex-wife resisted the idea. But the court ruled that these concerns were outweighed by the children’s best interest -- to maintain a close Internet connection with their dad.

His daughters routinely communicated with him, as well as his brother in Singapore and his sister in Northern California. Sometimes they engaged in four-way instant messaging sessions. "That's pretty cool," said Dwyer's oldest daughter, Amanda, a fifth-grader. "I can stay in touch with all my family and know what's going on."

"Both girls know they have a home with me in Florida and know there's a whole network of friends and neighbors who care about them," Dwyer said. "It provides a connection to this whole other home that they have that they wouldn't have otherwise."

• Dad in Florida, Daughters in California, Communicating by Web Camera (Newhouse News Service article)
• Video-Conferencing Helps Working Families Connect (Wall Street Journal article)

Dad and Son in Spain, Mom in California, Communicating By Web Camera

Rafael Hernandez-Mora and Gretel Jex were married in Ohio in 1993. He was 24 and she was 18. Their son, Rafael, was born in Spain that year. But the parents separated in 1996, and in 1997 Jex left Spain and took the boy with her to places unknown to the boy’s father.

For more than four years, Interpol searched for the mother and child. They lived at different times in California, Utah and Colorado, according to court documents, and were found in Trinidad in 2001.

Dad filed for custody, with a desire to raise the boy in Spain. Mom’s attorney argued that the eight-year-old boy was attached to his mother and would be traumatized by going off to Spain with a father he hardly knew.

Ultimately, the parents reached an out-of-court settlement, approved by a federal court in Denver under Hague Convention rules that stipulate legal jurisdiction when couples who live in different countries divorce.

Dad would continue to live in Cartagena, Spain, and take the boy with him to attend school there. Mom planned to live in Brookdale, California. With the help of the Internet, they would share custody, including shared decision-making on all issues. With high-speed Internet connections and high-end computers paid for by the father, Mom and son could remain in constant contact.

Dad would also create and maintain a website for the child with the child’s schedules, activities, pictures and information, and ensure that mom’s privacy was protected in her communications with her son.

Florida, 2001: Mom Wanted to Move to Ohio, Daughter Communicating By Web Cam

Within a few months of the New Jersey decision, in Winter Springs, Florida, Tawny Kaleita-Sniderman asked a judge to allow her to take her 10-year-old daughter Ashton to Lancaster, Ohio with her, since her new husband had been offered a job there. The girl’s father could communicate with her on a daily basis via e-mail, chat and web camera, Kalieta-Sniderman told the judge.

The court decided, however, that Ashton should stay with her father in Florida and Kaleita-Sniderman could be the parent to communicate with her daughter via web cam. Her attorney did such a fine job convincing the judge that “virtual visitation” would work that the judge decided the mother would make the better virtual parent, and the daughter should stay with father in Florida.

After three months of video conferencing with her daughter, Tawny Kaleita-Sniderman was sold on the technology. "I can now participate in what I couldn't by phone,” she told The New York Times.

She could share in the spontaneous excitement of her child’s everyday life, she said. The day before Asheton’s class picture was to be taken, for example, she used the web cam to model outfits and hair styles for her mom. She also showed off sculptures she made in art class, and threw kisses to her mother’s three dogs. Waiting until their next face-to-face visit would mean losing out on that day’s excitement,” Kaleita-Sniderman said. "With virtual visits you can see excitement,"

A web cam is “the only way I see [my daughter]. We could just sit there, and I could watch her hair grow. That's worth it to me."

"It's not like a hug. It's not like giving a kiss good night, but it's better than nothing. It's better than talking to a black phone and imagining."

Ashton’s father, and Tawny’s ex-husband, Gary Kaleita, a real estate lawyer who has also remarried, was less impressed with the technology. He resented having to pay to install a high-end system in his home; and felt the “virtual visits” sometimes came at inconvenient times that interrupted his daughter’s routine at his house. Without a high-speed connection, the technology left much to be desired. “There are a lot of echoes," he said, "The picture is fuzzy, there is a time delay on the sound. It is not really a meaningful way to communicate."

2002: Mother Wins Custody of Three Children and Moves 500 Miles Away; Massachusetts Court Orders Father To Virtually Visit With Children

The seven-year marriage of Paul Cleri and Lorraine Baltzer bore three children. Upon their divorce in the spring of 2002, Ms. Baltzer sought to leave the Boston area where they had lived and take the three children – a five-year-old son and two-year-old twin girls -- with her back to Long Island where she grew up. Her extended family of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, could help her better manage her new life as a single mom, she believed.

Paul Cleri opposed his ex-wife’s move. He was a "hands-on" dad who spent nearly every day with at least one of his children, he said. He helped potty-train the girls, taught his son how to swim, cooked meals for them, and routinely read night-time stories and put the children to bed. The children’s best interests, he felt, was in allowing them to maintain day-to-day contact with their father, especially at such a young age, in the Boston metropolitan area.

Judge E. Chouteau Merrill of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court heard more than three days of testimony in the case, including testimony from a psychologist who said the children would be better off if they stayed in Massachusetts and remained physically close to their father.

Ultimately, the judge made a decision in keeping with the legal trend in Massachusetts to allow one parent to move away with the children if the move produces a “real advantage” to the custodial parent, on the theory that such benefits to a parent would trickle down to the children.

To Cleri, she granted traditional visitation rights – every other weekend, holidays, four weeks in the summer – and a new right, “virtual visitation” twice a week via computer for an hour. "To facilitate the virtual visitation, each party shall forthwith purchase and install a video camera attachment and the related software for his or her computer," Judge Merrill wrote.

Since both parents worked in the computer field and were familiar with how to set up web cameras and high-speed Internet connections, Merrill said virtual visitation would be a relatively inexpensive way for Cleri to maintain contact with his children – he could read them stories and help them with homework from a distance.

Lorraine Baltzer had offered the virtual visitation rights to her ex-husband as a kind of olive branch, said her attorney, David Cherny. A web cam connection is "superior to telephone contact, and one step away from being there," he said. "This is not a substitute for Dad's visitation with the kids," Cherny said. "This was an added element that allows a parent to maintain the type of contact with their children on a more daily basis than they otherwise would have."

Immediately after the decision, Paul Cleri told the press he was “devastated” by the decision, and didn’t know how he would cope with his children’s move to New York with their mother. Shortly thereafter he announced his intention to appeal. "It's going to be difficult for the children as well as me," he said. "I don't view virtual visitation as a practical alternative to physical contact. You can't hug a computer."

''It certainly could be a great idea to augment physical visits, but it certainly shouldn't be done in lieu of what the children are used to and what the father is used to.''

Paul Cleri's lawyer, Lisa Poblocki, worried that without the allure of high-tech tools, the judge’s decision might have gone in her client’s favor, because it was such a close call. ''If the trend continues, it makes it almost a slam-dunk, I think, for the custodial parent to move.'' she said.

Cleri said on the Today show that it’s preposterous to equate visiting with his 5-year-old son and twin 2- year-old daughters via web cam a few times a week with “being there” for them, stroking their hair, giving them a hug in the morning. The children's short attention span at that age would make online "visitation" difficult if not impossible.

He did say he was going to try hard to maintain his relationship with his children, and would use a web cam routinely with them, rather than give up in despair, as so many fathers do.

Was Lorraine Baltzer’s offer of "virtual visiting" THE deciding factor in this case? From reading news reports, it's unclear, though ideologues and spinmeisters assume so. There are, of course, many high-conflict custody battles in which courts rule that a move is in the best interests of the child(ren) if the custodial parent's new situation means significantly more money for the family, more flexibility, a larger extended family support network, a better school situation for the child or children, and less conflict between the parents.

In New York, Virtual Visitation Doesn’t Meet the Court’s Standards

In New York, Kime v. Kime, the court applied a multi-factor test designed to measure the best interests of the child, and rejected the idea that communication by letter, fax, or e-mail could replace actual visitation.

Massachusetts: Moving Mother Must Pay For Father’s Virtual Access

In August, 2001, Judge Nancy M.Gould, an associate justice in Suffolk Probate and Family Court, granted virtual visitation custody arrangement between a father and his 10-year-old son. His ex-wife was planning to move to California with the child. .

Gould gave the mother, Amy S. Looker, custody of the boy and established a visitation schedule for the father, Steven M. Chevalier. But she also ordered the mother to pay for video equipment and cameras that would allow Chevalier to talk to his son face-to-face - via a Web camera or a videophone - on a regular basis.

The idea occurred to Gould after she read a magazine article about ''virtual'' possibilities in other fields.' 'It's not a substitute for face-to-face visitation, and I'll never say it is,'' Gould said, adding that the on-camera sessions supplemented an extensive visitation schedule. ''It's difficult. You're dealing with two coasts.''