Welcome to the twenty first century and 'Virtual Visitation'. This concept has been long coming for divorced and or separated parents who live far apart. Working out visitation can be frustrating, not to mention expensive, when parents are hundreds or thousands of miles apart.
Many non-custodial parents can now look forward to taking advantage of virtual visitation to stay in touch with their children who are no longer residing close to them. Of course virtual visitation can't take the place of traditional in-person visits, but it seems like the world just got flatter and parents who are living a long way away from their children can still keep in touch virtually.
Recently there have been cases of judges utilizing new laws which allow, 'web visitation' by way of video conferencing .This virtual visitation supplements the non-custodial parent's "in-person" visitation rights. This allows those parents who don't have primary custody to have the next best thing to an in-person visit when it's not feasible to have regular in-person visits. Now that video chatting is common place and accessible in most homes, there's no reason why these virtual visits won't become more widespread.
New Virtual Visitation Laws are now being established across the country to facilitate the critical parent-child relationship when parents are separated. This will allow many military, incarcerated or other long distant non-custodial parents the legal right to utilize technologies such as email, telephone, internet and video conferencing to maintain contact with their children.
Most clients that I have spoken to about this idea are very excited at this prospect and many consider it to be a no-brainer. It certainly helps to lessen the blow that many non-custodial parents feel when their particular circumstances mean that they can no longer be geographically close to their children. So here's to this type of law becoming universally adopted and more widespread across the country.