The father of my seven year old and my ex-husband left when my daughter was a year. Up until the age of for her dad was in her life off and on but never was never reliable with his visitation, made up awful lies and would tell them to our daughter about me and my family and was just not a good dad. My daughter now calls my husband dad and feels that her real dad is just not a very good person or dad. Now, after three years her dad calls me and is ready to be in her life. I have full custody but we did have visitation arrangements. He has paid child support off and on - currently not, has been court ordered to pay day care expenses but isn't so is in contempt of court. What should I do? Do I have to allow him visitation? Can I arrange it so that's is supervised? In my heart, I know that this will likely only be a temporary thing and she will have her nearly mended heart broken all over again...

He has every right to see her but considering your daughter's feelings, I suggest not. Its like giving a candy to the child and snatching it away after the 1st bite. Unsupervised or supervised, its your daughter who will have to bear the pain if her birth father keeps disappearing out of her life every now and then. Think about her 1st and then go ahead.

If he has a court ordered visitation order still in effect, you have to allow it. You can go to court now and try to get it modified, but you cannot simply disallow it - that could get you in a lot of trouble.

If you say its court ordered for visitation than it could possibly hurt you in the end if you don't but on the other hand he has came back off and on so it may go either way. I am in a similar situation with my step daughter, she calls me daddy but her father wants a part in her life after seven years. I would suggest maybe starting it slow to kind of do a refresher of who he is. Depending on the laws you may be able to get it supervised I know when I lived in Arizona we got ours supervised but that is actually up to the and it depends on a couple of things.